


The Problem of Bodies (Part 2: New Home City)

by Mz_Mallow



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Coming of Age, Family, Family Feels, Gen, Ghost Mettaton, Ghosts, Headcanon, Trans Mettaton, Weird Biology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-23
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2018-09-01 17:50:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 50,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8632606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mz_Mallow/pseuds/Mz_Mallow
Summary: Continuation of The Problem of Bodies (Part 1: Blook Acres): Life has complications when you're incorporeal in a society full of corporeal monsters; more so when you're not quite like other ghosts. After unthinkable tragedy strikes the Dreemurr children and the Underground, and the Blooks have to cope with the new reality. Set in game backstory. Going forward, this story also features the 6 human children between Chara and Frisk.





	1. Vacation

The outskirts of New Home city were perpetually amber. In the districts close to the Dreemurr’s castle city inhabitants adjusted their circadian rhythm to that of individuals who saw true sunlight, like where it broke into the throne room. Further out, the schedules of shops and households became more staggered. Electric lights were always on somewhere nearby, and even unlit streets kept a hazy vespertine glow; light reflected off the stone cave roof at the edge of visibility and filtered through dust stirred by many feet. Commerce still followed a general tide, though, so it was during the quieter and emptier time when Feisttablook and Napstablook approached the lower-side shopping district. Knight Knight followed them, pulling the ghosts’ rough wooden cart, which was heavily loaded with a burlap-covered, ice-packed tower of boxes and pails.

An olive swished through Napstablook’s cheek and out through their base, rolling to a stop at Knight Knight’s feet.

“Yoo hoo!” rang from a second-story balcony. “Sorry Napster, my aim is atrocious. Up here!”

The ghosts looked up to see the undersides of fuschia and lime-green umbrellas two stories overhead. Feist gestured at it with a head tilt and looked at Knight Knight, who clacked her abdominal beak in assent, and the two ghosts floated vertically to the balcony. Happstablook rested at a café table behind a martini glass half-full of bitter water, a small knapsack on the bench by his side. The pair alighted on the table’s opposite bench.

Seeing a pair of sunglasses strapped across Feisttablook’s forehead, Happstablook leaned forward and exclaimed, “Oooh! This is new.”

Feistablook flushed bright mustard-color. “It’s just because the Core is so, so, so obnoxiously bright. I don’t know how anyone can stand it.”

“No need to get defensive,” Happstablook crooned, “it’s adorable. How are you even keeping them on? Elastic?” He drifted up a few inches and leaned across the table. “And you’re not phasing through? I envy your ectoplasm control, I really do. Very chic.” Feisttablook huffed and looked away. It was hard to believe Happy’s compliment could be sincere and not the set-up to some awful joke, but no punchline followed, only that look of approval. It felt good, validating; embarrassingly so — Feist didn’t know how to respond.

Happstablook returned to his seat, extending an arm and resting it on the edge of the table. “Sooo… How’s the harvest?”

Napstablook’s eyes sparkled and they bounced on the bench. “Yield up 23.5 percent from last season. Plus thirty percent more with shells over 20 millimeters. The florescent lights still make everything look creepy, but the snails love it.”

“Fabulous! Perfect!” Happy clapped his arms together; it made no sound. “I’ve got two more definite buyers on the commercial side, and another three maybe’s — they want to do a test run, see how their new snail-based dishes sell with customers before they commit to a reoccurring order, which is fine. Several more household buyers too — here’s our updated list for you.” He rummaged in the knapsack, pulled out a tightly-folded scrap of paper, and slid it over the table to them. “Let me do the Queen’s delivery before I go, though.”

Feist turned a suspicious eye. “You’re trying to get a look at Chara, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am. And why not? If they’re going to bring an end to the legacy of the War, and we’re all going to be back above-ground and living with humans again soon, doesn’t it make sense to learn as much about humans as possible now?”

Feist glowered. “I don’t trust them. Any human.”

Happy swallowed his response rather than let yet another retread of this debate spoil their meeting. “Good. It’s your loss — I’m going to see Toriel. So. Are we settled up with transportation?”

“Yes. Or, we should be.” Feist cringed. “Aaron seems to think the electricity installation and the TV means we’re rich now. He was angling for a raise in fee the whole trip. Thought he was being subtle but… really, not.”

“Protein powder won’t buy itself, bro!” Happy delivered the imitation with the requisite wink. His wisp-thin, high-pitched ghost voice sounded nothing like Aaron’s testosterone-marinated drawl, but the intonation and gesture were uncannily accurate.

A violent shudder wracked Feist’s form. “That… that… that…” a steadying breath. “That guy is not my favorite.”

Happy blinked in surprise, then frowned in sympathy. “When I have a twelve-pack I’ll do all the cart-pulling, but until then, I’ll deal with him. I know how to speak his language. Don’t worry about it.”

Feist made a sigh of relief and a thin smile of gratitude. A glance at the tabletop, then a pointed glare at the martini glass resting on it. “Have you been living on alcohol the whole time you’ve been here? You should take better care of yourself.”

“Alcohol makes me smart,” Happy retorted with a prim tone and a smirk.

Feist harrumphed like an exasperated parent. “You’re going to have a killer headache, adjusting back to wholesome food.”

“Alas, the wages of dissipated living,” Happy replied airily, pressing stubby arm to chest in a make-do dramatic gesture. “Don’t you two have any plans to indulge in the big city?”

Napstablook straightened, eyes shining. “I brought my recording equipment, so I can build up my music library. I’m hoping to get plenty of ghost songs on this trip! Especially baby-making music.”

Happy collapsed against the table in a paroxysm of lewd giggles. Napstablook went transparent with surprise. “Oh no… I said something wrong?”

Feist’s lower eyelids and upper lip drew up in confusion. “You know. Brooding songs. What with the whole Underground full of hope because of the royal children, we figured there must be city ghosts living near the Dreemurr home with buds.” Happy caught his breath, blushing crimson, and Feist’s confusion deepened. “What’s wrong with you?”

Happy returned upright and quieted. Among the corporeal monsters of the City a bawdy and gregarious ghost was a novelty, and Happy had leveraged flirtatiousness and crude humor into a social invitation more than a few times. The restrictions of Blook Acres clung to Feisttablook and Happstablook, and they didn’t even realize it, he thought. He had to be more careful. “Well. Um. I suppose it’s time for me to return to the real world. Best of luck with the deliveries. Enjoy your vacation, darlings. Don’t do anything I would do.”

The three ghost siblings embraced, which is to say, they bumped sides. Happy fished a labeled pail from the cart’s stacks, and they parted ways.

 

* * * * *

Happstablook knocked at the door of the Dreemurr home using a stick. There was no answer. He swung the pail back and forth to build up inertia and thunked it against the door. Still no answer. He glanced back across the yard at the gatekeeper standing watch; their heavy flesh-and-bone fist could make loud sustained knocking, but it was embarrassing to ask for help. The last remaining alternative was also embarrassing — Happy hated the high pitch of his voice — but it was hard to miss.

“Delivery for Toriel!” he shrieked. The gatekeeper startled, glanced back, shivered, and settled.

Finally, the door opened and Toriel peered out. It took time for her eyes to focus on what was on her stoop. “Oh, how lovely. Thank you,” she said, the words just as expected but lacking warmth, formed only with effort. She lifted the pail from Happstablook’s arms, turned stiffly, and walked back into the house, leaving the door ajar. Halfway across the rug she stopped short and turned. Her eyes met Happy’s bewildered expression and her eyebrows knitted with surprise and regret. “Oh! I’m so sorry. Come in, you must come in.” She shut the front door and swept past Happy towards the kitchen.

The floorplan was just the same as the Dreemurr house in Home City where Asriel had been born, but all the surfaces shone with newness; the subtle difference laid over familiar shapes left Happy disoriented. He peeked to the right, across the living room in the direction of the bedrooms’ hallway — empty — and followed after Toriel, until she stopped short again beside the dining room table. She turned, and her eyes were red and watery. “I didn’t think… I don’t have anything to offer you.”

Happy kept his expression a cheerful mask; he had known something was upsetting Toriel as soon as she had opened the door, but now she looked inexplicably devastated at her insignificant lapse in hospitality, and that was frightening. “Do you have tea?”

“Do you take tea?”

“Not the water so much, but the tea itself is dried leaves and fruit, right? I can eat that.”

Toriel’s head tilted at the request, but when she returned from the kitchen several minutes later the tray she carried held a small dish of dried tea leaves and lemon rind as well as a teapot and teacup. She unloaded the tray and poured a cup, moving as if her joints were gummed up and her skin raw.

Happy extracted ghost food from the tea. It was indeed edible, but terribly bitter. He crunched with grim satisfaction, and initiated conversation. “How has the family been?”

Toriel’s composure broke. Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. She removed a handkerchief from her sleeve and swabbed at her face. “I’m so sorry. What a depressing visit this is turning out to be.”

Happy let his mouth fall open in surprise, then lifted both arms in a placating gesture. “No, no, not at all. I should apologize, for intruding when you’re in distress. Do I even dare ask what would cause such pain to a lady so noble?”

Toriel shook her head. She paused, carefully constructing her response. “Asgore has been ill. He’s recovering and will be well again soon, thank goodness. He… ate something he shouldn’t have.”

“Aha! He’s the one that ate up the ghost food.” Happy immediately regretted the glib joke; Toriel’s eyes brimmed with tears again. “If he’s recovering, then there’s nothing to worry about,” he reassured her.

Toriel’s chin trembled. “I always manage to find something to worry about. But I’m afraid this time I may have reason.” She ducked her head, pressing her curled hand to face, index finger to mouth, and refused to say more. The two of them sat. Her tea ceased steaming.

The silence and anxiety beat down on Happy. He cast through his thoughts for anything to counteract it, and thought of a performance by a roadside troupe he had seen once. “Let me fight your fears for you, my Queen,” he said in a clarion voice. Toriel started; she had forgotten he was in the room.

Happy swooped across the room to the tools racked near the fireplace, pulled out a dulled poker with a flourish, and brandished it at an imaginary enemy. The ghost and his invisible opponent battled across the room, Happy’s expressions telling the story: ferocity, desperation, perseverance, bravery. On turning he snuck a glance at Toriel, and was gratified to see her leaning forward, intent on the performance, the distraught crease between her eyebrows temporarily smoothed away. He felt strong and clever and powerful. He felt masculine.

During the performance he had seen the actor had pantomimed being stabbed by clasping a prop sword under their armpit… the amateur. Happy turned the poker on himself and impaled it through his form, arching against it with a chilling cry. His performance was perhaps too good; Toriel wrapped her arms around herself and looked ill.

“My Queen… only you can save me…” he gasped with a rough cough, lying on the floor with the poker’s handle protruding towards the ceiling.

“Oh dear, oh dear… how?” Toriel fretted, joining in the imaginary scenario.

“The kiss of the truly pure of heart… works miracles…” He winked, drawing on his imitation of Aaron, then closed his eyes and slumped.

A pause. Toriel’s voice wavered. “Um. But, Little Ghost… I’m a married woman…”

Dammit. He’d neglected to tailor the end to the audience. “On the hand. Let me kiss your hand,” he amended hastily. He eased the poker over onto the floor, phased out of it and rose upright.

Toriel smiled, a hint of color returning to her face as she held out a hand, the other lifted to her cheek. “My! How courtly.”

Happstablook took her hand carefully in his short arms and lowered his face to kiss it. The ends of her claws phased into his ectoplasm, the living quicks of the nails dimpling the surface of his chest. Where her body contained life, it contained soul. So that’s why it was impossible for a ghost to possess a living being the way they could possess an object or a plant.

Toriel picked up the discarded poker. Her movements were graceful again as she stepped into the role, and she stood erect and regal. “Kneel,” she commanded.

Happy sunk almost into the floorboards, lowering his head towards her reverently.

“For your service to the kingdom, in battling foes unseen and unnamed at the cost of your own safety, I hereby dub thee… Sir Ghost.” She pressed the poker lightly against his back, on one side and then the other.

Happy lifted his head, blushing a bright pink, eyes trembling. Sir Ghost. She had called him “Sir.” He felt the mismatched planes of his existence re-orienting, closer into place. The performance no longer felt like the frivolous escapism he had intended.

“… after all…” Toriel stage-whispered, “’Little Ghost’ is your parent. Far too stodgy for a hip young ghost like yourself.” She giggled.

The moment passed, and Happstablook shook off the feeling. “It’s good to hear your laugh again, Queen Toriel. It’s time I should be going, though. Please enjoy your snails.”

“Thank you for stopping by. It’s been lovely.” Toriel accompanied him to the door, but stopped him just on the threshold. “I so appreciate your giving me your ear. I’d like to ask… won’t you be discreet about what you heard?”

“Like the very grave.”

Toriel laughed obligingly, but the response was flat, cut with the preoccupation that had laid over her at the beginning of their meeting. “Oh, you young people. Such a strange sense of humor.” 

* * *

Still no sign of either of the Dreemurr children, Happy noted. Toriel’s fearful, sad expression butted into his thoughts. He pushed the image away firmly. The memory of Toriel’s voice calling him “Sir” surfaced. He pushed that away too. Concentrating instead on his almost-completely-successful dramatic turn as Dashing Hero, he began the half-day trip back to Blook Acres.


	2. News

Stavalblook met Happstablook at the edge of the farm — they must have been waiting, taking time to rest after the push of the harvest — and handed him a ghost crabapple. Happy took it with gratitude and a hidden edge of chagrin. Feist’s prediction had been correct: the bright heady energy of ghost alcohol had burned through quickly and left him with a squeezing headache. The pain exacerbated the sense of constriction he always felt when he returned to the farm after spending time among corporeal folks.

Staid hovered expectantly, questions spilling out. “You had a good visit? Sales went well? New customers? Feist and Napster had a good trip? Produce traveled all right?”

Their eagerness grated, but Happy’s initially rote answers spun into more and more glowing assessments, feeding off of their excitement. He mentioned that Toriel appreciated the delivery of snails and that she looked healthy; everything else he had seen, done or sensed at the Dreemurr house he left out.

Staid was in an exceptionally good mood, so as Happy continued to share anecdotes from his stay in New Home City he let himself relax. The more he relaxed, the more he ruminated. He wasn’t ready to unwrap how he felt about Toriel’s “new name” for him, not even close, but it might not be a bad time to feel out how he had surprised — disturbed? — the rest of the family at the café. Had he been spending too much time with corporeal people, with mammals, until he thought like one? Was that bad?

“Napstablook said something weird when I saw them,” he started, slick with casualness. If Staid did react negatively, Napstablook — adorable, traditional, sincere Napstablook — could take the heat without risk to family standing. “They said they were planning to record ‘baby-making music’ in the city. Isn’t that funny?”

Staid wavered and their eye opened wide. Their expression broke into a smile. “I don’t believe it. Every time I think Napstablook lives off in their own little world, they do something amazing.”

Happy’s thoughts found no solid ground and stalled out. “What…?” he managed.

Staid looked at the ground and smiled, complexion infused with serene dark green. “How to put this? They’ll be back from vacation a little late to put songs for growing buds to use, but I hope they record some songs to help with abscission.”

Their unusual good mood clicked into significance. Happy kicked himself for not taking notice earlier. “Whoooaaaa! Yes!” he shouted, catching Staid into a hug and spinning them around. “Fantastic! New Blooks!” Staid followed the twirl easily, with a laugh; like all ghosts, budding ghosts were vulnerable only to magical and emotional harm, invulnerable to physical effects.

“It won’t be easy at first. All three of you are going to have to squeeze into one house until we can get another built.”

“Not a problem. I’ve survived sharing a house with Feist this long; having the Napster there too will be a buffer. And if Feist gets too annoying, Napster probably also makes a decent projectile.”

Too far? Too far, Happy chided himself. But Staid’s attention was elsewhere and they had already mentally moved on. “How could Napstablook know? I didn’t tell them. I didn’t even know for sure myself until just before they left.”

“They probably didn’t know. They’re probably just lucky.” Hearing the sour note, Happy brightened his tone. “We’re all lucky! Imagine, with more help we could expand into other crops, fill in the gaps in the year. Ooh! We could open a shop. A shop in the capitol, even! Sounds fabulous, doesn’t it?” He waved an arm, as if it ended in a hand. “Blook Produce, from our family to yours. We’ll really be in business!”

Staid laughed. “They’re not going to split off carrying tools!”

“Babies must work,” Happy intoned with a playfully-raised eyebrow.

“Oh, hush.” Staid’s eye sparkled. “That does sound nice, though. A shop! It’s something to work towards.” They began to float back and forth, pacing with a smile, thoughts turning inward.

And I could staff that shop, Happy thought, tracking Staid’s physical motion with his eyes and following their growing enthusiasm in his soul. Use my talent for sales and public relations full-time. It was a good dream, one he could work towards and achieve. A dream he could admit to. Work with corporeal people, socialize with corporeal people. Live with corporeal people, become… He shut down the thought. Staid continued to pace, murmuring bright words to themself, but Happy’s eyes had gone still.

* * * * *

A subset of snails remained that had been too small for harvest and would hibernate through the winter. As Happy examined each snail for health, the thought of Toriel’s title for him insinuated itself past his will to keep distracted. She had called him “Sir.”

But she couldn’t have meant anything by it. “Sir” was simply a word associated with knights, and he had introduced the idea of a knight in the little fantasy he had staged. It was all part of a game, played for laughs. She had simply played along. For laughs. After all, she had also told him to kneel. That was a command that only made sense for a person with legs, and as much as he would like to have legs — more than once had consoling dreams about having legs and thought it was real for a few ecstatic moments before waking — he didn’t.

But maybe she did suspect something. His insides seized with worry at the thought, but it also gave him some sense of vindication, of hope, and so he kept returning to it like a tongue worrying a loose and painful tooth. She was the Queen, and she had been alive as long as almost anyone in the Underground; who knew what she had experienced or knew or could figure out? What if the word was her way of sending a message to him, to let him know she was sympathetic, a person who would listen? Maybe even help him find a solution? But what if she had only sensed something different, un-ghostly, about him, and the next time she spoke to Staid she would laugh — or frown in concern? Or disapproval? — and say, “Your child did the queerest thing…” and then Staid would draw their own conclusions and react. What if… What if…

Absorbed in fretting, he didn’t notice Staid’s approach until they spoke.

“Is something on your mind?”

Happy jolted; the snail slipped in his grasp, and he juggled for a few seconds before managing to grip it again and set it gently back inside the pen. The snail gave him a look of wounded dignity and scorn before sliding away.

“Snails. Totally snails on the brain. What else?” Smooth. Real smooth, he winced internally.

Staid’s eye ran him over from bottom to top; for a person with no need for or habit of wearing clothes, it was funny how easily Happy felt naked. “I was just thinking,” Staid mused, “You’ve seemed… focused in on yourself since you got back. Like… maybe there’s something going on?”

Happy’s face was a mild, cheerful mask. His insides roiled. “I’d never keep a secret from you.”

Staid’s expression was kind. Supportive. Anticipatory. “Oh no, I didn’t mean that. I trust you, of course. I mean… You said you had a good visit to the capitol. Maybe you had a really, really good visit? Like… really good?”

“I… don’t understand?”

“Maybe we’re going to have to… build two new houses? Instead of just one?”

Comprehension hit, and for a moment Happy was terrified that Staid saw something true, that there were strangers growing inside of him. (Not strangers, he would later correct himself, More of us, more of myself.) The beat of fear and repulsion he felt at the thought gave him reassurance: ghost pregnancy came from satisfaction and hope, not anxiety and doubt. He was all set for prophylactic cynicism.

“Oh! No. Wouldn’t that be delightful! But no. Definitely not.”

“Oh. When we talk about expanding the business, you sound so sure and you’ve got all these plans, I just thought…” Disappointment momentarily dimmed Staid’s glow. “I hope I didn’t make you feel bad by asking. Don’t worry. You’re young for it yet. Magnanimous ghost like you, good place like this, it’ll happen.”

I hope not. I really, really hope not. Happy smiled to show agreement and gratitude.

* * * * *

About two weeks had gone by since Happy’s return from the capitol. Steady progress on tidying the farm for the snails’ hibernation was paced with time to rest. Feist and Napstablook weren’t expected back from their post-deliveries vacation for another couple of weeks yet.

The two ghosts in Blook Acres were indulging in a TV show when Staid beckoned Happy’s attention with a nudge, their mouth quirked into a shy smile. “Look,” they cooed, and looked down at their own side. There was a circle of another, darker color. “Blue,” Staid said, “Like my parent. Like the sky in late evening.” Their gaze lifted to meet Happy’s eyes, and their look of joy was rimmed with sadness, like the inedible and bitter crust of salt on the glasses of pretty cocktails Happy liked to order sometimes. “You’ve never seen the night sky. I only saw it once myself. It’s…” They reached for the right words, eye peering into the middle distance, but gave up. “You’d be disappointed anyway,” they laughed. “It’s something like the image we cast when we lie on the ground and feel thankful, but it’s dull in comparison. The reality isn’t as appealing as the illusion.”

“That’s always the way it is,” Happy said, and felt a stab of worry. Quips like that played well in the city, but at best Staid would see his cynicism as a joke in poor taste; they might even sense that he was talking about himself.

But Staid was still caught up in their memories, insulated by positive and comfortable feelings, and the comment slid by without note. “That tradition is the one gift my parent was able to give me,” they said, voice thin and distant. They sighed, shaking off their reverie. “I can’t make out the color on the other one yet. They must be a light color; or also green? Any color is good, of course. A blue Blook, though. That will be nice.”

Happy rather thought the color looked like a bruise, but he only nodded. “Obviously pink is the best color for a ghost to be. But blue… I won’t send them back if you don’t.”

Staid poked him in the side, a playful reprimand delivered with a wink, and they settled back into watching TV. Onscreen a bright blue cloth was standing in for the daytime sky, a lamp for the sun, a field of water sausages had been carted to the film studio and arranged in pots, and a dog and a cat were playing at falling in love. A boom mike slipped into the camera’s frame, spoiling the illusion. The actors continued as if nothing had happened.

* * * * *

The Underground’s climate reflected changing seasons above to varying degrees by season, location, and proximity to the surface. Now the river grew cold, murky and tea-dark with tannins, sending a chill through the air in Waterfall. The waters’ flow brought down rafts of dead leaves, once festive oranges and reds but rendered into sodden leached-mud colored clumps by their passage underground; they clogged the trash-strewn lower stretch of the river and were tossed into the abyss.

Staid was relentlessly cheerful, but getting distracted and slow. As much as they insisted they wanted to work, they more often ended up lounging around and daydreaming, and of course Happy urged them to take it easy. Today they had set out for the pens with a pail in each arm and a fretful wrinkle to their forehead; they’d said they had an uneasy feeling, though they couldn’t explain what or why. It was all very easy to understand, though… just the normal biology of their condition: first magnanimity and hopefulness, then brooding. Happy had bent to speak to Staid’s belly, Quit it, kiddos, don’t give our parent worries, I’ve got that covered already, and encouraged Staid to stay in the house and relax.

Happy was mustering his motivation to prepare another pen for next season’s clutch of snail hatchlings. A part of him wanted to leave all the work for Feisttablook — physical labor was their skillset, not his. They would be angry and cuss him out for his laziness, but they’d probably do it anyway, in the end… he might be willing to pay that price. But although he had a high tolerance for being the target of Feist’s anger, Staid and Napstablook were easily upset — and the new Blooks deserved to come into a harmonious household — so he hmmph’d and set himself to the work.

As he turned the soil and worked in shell-meal for calcium, he envisioned his future siblings floating at the side of the pen, watching him work. Mentally he explained each step and its purpose, turning the task into a demonstration. The imaginary little ghosts made a rewarding audience: they hung on his every word, ooh’d in admiration when he lifted the moderately-heavy shovel, were impressed by every silly flourish. He began to hum; his movements became grandiose. Tones settled into a melody, and words sprang out.

“Racing like a winner  
He sees the checkered flag  
He wouldn’t be a dinner  
He had it in the bag  
He crossed it like a master  
Nobody could go faster  
The wind was in his sails   
And that’s the story of  
The Thunder Racing Snail!”

Driven by the imaginary attention he finished the work in short time. For a grand finale he threw the shovel on the ground by the side of the pen with a satisfying thump and shot upward, phasing as he rose so the soil and grime that had clung to his ectoplasm fell to the ground. Buoyed by imagined applause, he headed back to the houses for a meal.

A sighthound was standing at the houses, talking to Staid — the same sighthound Happy had played with years before in Snowdin, that day when Feist had trashed the clothing store, the day Happy had pinned the first conscious thought to what was him about him.

Something was wrong. Staid was pale and very, very still. Sighthound’s posture was taunt, it was obvious even at a distance. Happy sped up.

Sighthound caught the scent of him and turned around. “Hey, Du…” He caught himself. “… Hey, Happy.” It was like this every time. The Sighthound’s memory of his ghost friend was hitched to that memory of their first meeting, and the process of realization repeated at their every subsequent meeting. The first time Happy had tried to give him some hint: I wasn’t lying to you. The dog had replied easily: I know that, don’t worry about it. Happy ventured, nervously: You can call me ‘dude’ if you want. The dog had laughed. You ghosts really are all super polite! My Mom explained everything. You don’t have to say that, I’ll get it right. And he did, but always after that momentary, almost-affirming lapse. Not that they saw each other often; after that first playtime, it had seemed like they didn’t have much in common after all. But then, maybe that was normal? The only men who lived near Blook Acres were Gerson and the local Aaron, and though Happy had tried to mentally fit them together into some sort of formula, they didn’t have anything in common besides both being able to lift Gerson’s hammer.

“What’s going on?” Happy asked.

The dog quivered. “We’re going to war. Asgore’s reinstating the royal guard, he’s looking for recruits.”

This was an exceptionally tasteless joke, even for Happy’s crude tastes. “How are we going to war? Who would we be fighting?”

“Humans.”

“Uh-huh. And what does Chara Dreemurr have to say about that?”

“They’re dead. The Dreemurr children are both dead.”

Ugly word. No delicate “fallen down,” not even one-sided goodbyes, no time to put denial to rest and move into cathartic grieving. Dust. Gone. The knowledge hit Happy’s mind like a tactile force, mangling his thoughts.

How? Happy formed the word without sound.

“Chara got sick. Some human disease. It took them down quick. Asriel took their soul and used it to get through the barrier. The humans attacked him. He got away from them and came back underground but he was hurt bad. He died too. That’s all I know.”

Thank you were the wrong words for that kind of news, so Happy remained silent.

Sighthound’s feet danced, punching indentations in the smooth mud of the yard. “People are getting together at Grillby’s. That’s what I came to say — he told me to let everyone know. I’d better get going. Um… Bye.”

He lingered a moment, waiting for some sort of acknowledgment, but received none. His narrow frame bent and sprung and he and raced away.

The two ghosts hovered, motionless.

A shudder started at the skirts of Staid’s ectoplasm and spread upward. Their form rocked with it; they slumped low to the ground; a frail sob squeezed out. “No. No.”

Happy held them, tried to make them still. The violence of their trembling startled him. His voice came out of his mouth steady and soothing, but took on a secondhand tremor from Staid. “Sighthound said he didn’t know everything, didn’t he? So, who knows what’s really going on? He’s a great guy, love him to mushy bits, but — don’t tell anyone I said this — I wouldn’t trust him to report the specials at Grillby’s. There’s no point in getting upset until we get some solid information.”

Staid kept shaking; they gave no sign that they’d heard his words. Happy gave them a firm pat on the back and backed away to phase through the wall into the blue house. He turned on the TV. Static. He turned it off and on again. Tried the next channel. And the next. Just static. The channels had gone off-air. Finally, one reporting news; a bear’s voice intoned: “…dead.” Happy slammed it off. Sighthound may have brought the destructive word into their lives first, but his intention had been to help them connect with community. The TV, though: its refusal to provide comforting distraction was a pure betrayal. 

Happy phased back out of the house to Staid’s side. They lolled like a deflated balloon, their edge trailing on the ground. The top of their head had gone pale, green pooling opaque in their lower half. At least they had stopped shaking.

“Let’s go see Gerson. He always knows just what to do, right? No point in feeling upset until we talk with him.”

Staid’s eyes were flat and unseeing. Happy nudged them; they offered no resistance to the motion, drifting sideways. This listlessness was unsettling, but perversely convenient. Happy pushed them along the path toward Gerson’s.


	3. Cousins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Three quotes from the game to set the scene for this chapter and the next:
> 
> “oh... a classic spooktune... they don't make songs like this anymore...”  
> \- Napstablook
> 
> “Us ghosts spend our whole lives looking for a proper vessel. Slowly, slowly, we grow closer to our new bodies...  
> Until one day, we too may become corporeal beings. Beings able to laugh, love, and dance like any other...”  
> \- Mad Dummy
> 
> “The humans attacked him with everything they had.”  
> “He was struck with blow after blow.”  
> “Asriel had the power to destroy them all.”  
> \- three ghosts inhabiting training dummies, New Home backstory sequence

Feisttablook hadn’t given credence to Napstablook at first when they had bumped close, jabbing a carried tin of snails into the center of Feist’s back, and rasped at the edge of hearing, “… there’s a ghost following us.” The skepticism had to be excused: it had been a bad time and place for epiphanies, and definitely not a time to indulge paranoia. The two ghosts were making their first delivery to one of the new clients Happy had listed: a high-class restaurant in downtown New Home, fancier than any place the Blooks had done business with back in Home City. The main dining room held scrollwork-framed mirrors, carpets with elaborate designs, and candles in crystal holders that would supply a romantic atmosphere when the restaurant welcomed guests for prime mealtime. There was little reason to bring vendors in through the front door instead of around to the kitchen, unless it was to impress them, and if that was really the intention it worked aggravatingly well. They hadn’t even met the chef yet and Feist was already tamping down a sense of insecurity that could too easily spark into anger, intentionally breathing slowly and concentrating on staying collected.

At Napstablook’s words Feist had felt an uncomfortable shiver and snuck a look back at the empty room, but had seen only a yellow ectoplasmic form in a mirror, the image bisected by an apparently self-propelled floating tin. “It’s just our reflection, dummy. See? Be professional. Get visible.” As Napstablook’s white ectoplasmic form glimmered back into view they had grimaced and opened their mouth to protest, but the sous-chef had arrived at that moment and Napster had shrunk back meekly.

The exchange had gone perfectly, on paper. The ghosts received payment in exchange for snails. There was a provisionary agreement for future purchase if snail tartlets (reminiscent of Toriel’s snail pie, but with no aspiration to duplicate, mind you) took off among customers. Still, Feist left disconcerted. The chef had been as polite as business necessitated, but brusque. He had asked to see “Pinky” and frowned when told he’d have to deal with the cousins of the smooth-talking ghost he’d met earlier, and had not used the ghosts’ names at any point in the exchange. He asked a dozen detailed questions about the snails’ feed and care and transportation, although he would sometimes interrupt the answers. He had seemed to unconsciously hold his breath when the tin was handed to him, only letting it out when the ghosts resumed a respectful distance. No spoken phrase could be singled out for fault, but Feist had the distinct feeling that his eyes had said “unclean.”

Feist was preoccupied, brooding over the exchange, when the two ghosts emerged back onto the street, and so it came as a surprise when Napster stopped still and donned an uncharacteristically smug expression.

A ghost was waiting for them outside the restaurant. They were sunset-orange, small, and rode high in the air, ectoplasmic edge undulating in a fidgety way. They carried a small knapsack with one arm. “Greetings, cousins,” they chirped.

“Hello, cousin,” Feist responded automatically, trained etiquette filling in for lack of experience. Napster just stared. Ghosts who weren’t Blooks never visited Blook Acres, and no ghosts lived in Snowdin. The Blooks had barely seen other ghosts during previous trips to Home or New Home, let alone conversed with any.

The little orange ghost swooped closer. “I’m Flederhoom. Call me Fleet.”

Napstablook gaped at the sudden familiarity of the ghost stranger, so Feist supplied the response. “I’m Feisttablook. And this is Napstablook.” If the stranger noted nicknames weren’t offered, they didn’t show any affront. They bobbed excitedly at the names, eyes shining. “Ooh! I know someone who’s been wanting to meet you for a long time. Another cousin.”

Feist’s insides wobbled with uncertainty. Being recognized without recognizing in return was terrifying. Staid had warned them against being too trusting of corporeal strangers, but the young ghosts didn’t have any basis for gauging other ghosts’ motives. “We… we… we have work to do. We’re making deliveries.”

“Oh? Maybe I can help? I do deliveries myself.” Feist held out the list of customers wordlessly. Fleet scanned it. “Yeah, I know these places. All these restaurants, at least. Not all the private homes, but I can find out, easy. Want some help?”

Feist glanced at Napster. Though their eyes were wide, their outline was sharp and color solid; now that they had fully seen the new ghost, Napster wasn’t afraid. “… yes?”

After the final delivery had been made and Fleet had handed over all the money with faultless honesty, Feist was finally able to let go of the guilty fear that trust had been given too readily. Accepting Fleet’s help had been a good decision. Their knowledge of the city, especially the shortcuts available to a flying ghost, was extensive. Together they completed the deliveries in a matter of hours, a fraction of the time expected. Feist was leery of revealing too much personal information to this new ghost, who already acted so oddly familiar, but it didn’t become an issue. Fleet preferred to talk constantly about the city: the sudden influx of population as the monsters of Home City had migrated in the wake of the Dreemurr family, the resulting boom in construction, the benefits and challenges of the rapidly changing demographics. Restaurants, food stalls and markets sprang up in abundance, and — whatever personal opinions the owners and staff might have — ghosts made good neighbors for their businesses. It was easier to give leftover and fallen food to ghosts than find another way to dispose of it, especially in the congested inner city. Well-fed ghosts would do favors in return, like carrying messages — another job Flederhoom took on. At the same time, restaurants and other businesses hired many corporeal workers, and so the bordering residential districts became hotly contested, a struggle for space between high-income housing, low-income housing, and the dilapidated old buildings that city ghosts inhabited.

Back at the now-unloaded cart, which had been lodged in an inner-city lot for a small fee, Feist fumbled to find an adequate response. “I don’t know how to… thank you, thank you, thank you. We’ve brought ghost fruit and bread, please share it with us.”

Fleet declined the invitation with a flick of their ectoplasm. “Hey, it’s my pleasure to be able to help out a couple of cousins. All I ask in return is some of your time. You’re in the city now, which means you’re my guests! I’ve got just one last delivery of my own to make, and then you wait and see, I’m going to treat you to the best meal you’ve had in your whole life.”

The Blooks followed Fleet through the wide streets of the restaurant district. Cheerful and colorful storefronts gave way to plainer, tall brick apartment buildings; this residential district was quiet as its furred, scaled, and angular inhabitants had mostly departed for work. They threaded a trash-strewn alley and crossed a narrow canal and the buildings changed suddenly, subtly. These buildings were older and dingy, with windows missing here and there. The soundscape shifted. There was no more creak of cartwheels, click of shoes or hooves, or slam of closing doors; instead, a rising tide of indistinct background vocal sounds. Then, the noise resolved into a chorus of chattering voices, ghostly voices, and the trio emerged into the midst of it. Ghosts floated up and down the street; ghosts tended little booths of assorted knickknacks; ghosts conversed in pairs and trios and larger groups; ghosts nodded at them in passing and said, “Good day, cousin.”

“Where… where… where are we?” Feist murmured to Fleet, eyes gorging on the scene.

“Like I said… hah, you know, Remi always tells me I talk too fast and people can’t follow. This is Ghost Town,” Fleet replied, eyes crinkled with a proud smile. Nobody familiar with the ghost towns and haunted houses that had existed on the surface would have found the small crowd impressive, but it was more ghosts than the young Blooks had known existed in the Underground.

Dazed by the commotion, trying to take it all in at once, Feisttablook and Napstablook trailed Flederhoom through the rush to a roadside booth. A half-dozen ghosts already crowded around the counter, and they had to wait their turn. Fleet kept up a running commentary until space at the counter cleared. As they bellied up to it, they could see trays of transparent ghost food and a long table behind it. The ghost staffing the counter greeted them. “What’ll you be having, cousins?”

“I have something for you first.” Fleet fished in their knapsack, pulled out a square of stiff paper, and leaned over the counter to give it to the cook. Feist caught a glimpse as it was passed over: it was a photograph of the counter where they were now sitting; the face of the ghost receiving the photo was visible between the backs of two other ghosts, pale and blurry, mouth twisted in an odd and unflattering half-expression.

The ghost glanced at the photo of themself and tears welled in their eyes. “Again? Why me?”

“Because you’re visible, having a shop along the street. That’s the only reason,” Fleet supplied gently.

The ghost bowed their head and cried fat teardrops onto the paper. It curled and browned, the image bubbling into webbed stickiness, and in a few seconds it was unrecognizable. They tucked the scrap of trash behind the counter. “Thank you. I owe you.”

“I’ll take you up on it now, if that’s okay. Could I get a ghost sandwich, and two more for my cousins here?” Fleet slid a few pieces of gold across the counter.

Back in Snowdin, a “ghost sandwich” was when somebody dropped a sandwich on the ground and left it there. Clearly it meant something different in Ghost Town, as the cook collected an assortment of ghost food ingredients from the trays and, wielding a luminous blue magical knife, assembled them into a blunt stack, just the right size to be held by ghost arms and eaten. As Napstablook watched the food take shape in wonder, Feist shot a questioning look at Fleet. “What was up with that photo?”

“It’s a prank some corporeal kids have turned into a new fad. ‘Ghost hunting,’ it’s called. They dare each other to take photos of ghosts without getting caught. Some ghosts don’t care much if they get photographed, but for most it’s really upsetting. So that’s my other job right now: a little light haunting. If the trophies turn out to be more trouble than they’re worth, hopefully those rude people’ll move on to some other game.”

The ghost sandwiches were delivered up. Napstablook bit in. Their eyes shone, tears building. “It’s… so… tasty. How can something this tasty exist? It’s scary.”

The cook flushed with pleasure and turned a shy smile at the ground.

It was delicious. On Blook Acres the food was by and large chosen for its nutritious qualities rather than its taste. Eating in Snowdin, and eating as a guest of Toriel, was a treat, but that was food designed for corporeal tastebuds and made edible for ghosts as an afterthought. This was different. These flavors, savory and tangy and pungent, were specifically chosen and combined to appeal to a ghostly sense of taste, and the result was almost obscene in its pleasure.

When they had finished eating, the Blooks followed Fleet again — this time relaxing into trust, luxuriating in satisfaction from their meal — down a few sidestreets to a smudged gray-brick building.

“My home,” Fleet said. “The person who wants to meet you is inside.” They phased in through the door and rose up through the stairwell, the Blooks following closely.

Emerging through the door into the uppermost room just under the roof, Feist’s soul thumped in surprise, and the feeling was echoed by a gasp from Napstablook. The slanted ceiling, which formed one of the room’s walls, was plastered with photographs like the one they had seen destroyed at the ghost restaurant: cropped bits of faces and blurry streaks, ectoplasm showing up as indistinct splotches and halos and afterimages when caught on film. The wide wall of the room, that wasn’t ceiling or window or door, was dominated by a scuffed desk, laden with books and stuffed with scraps of paper. On the floor, nestled between the tilt of the ceiling and the paper riot of the desk, sat two figures: a powder-blue plush child’s doll, made in the popular “everyman” design and decorated with a bow tie, and a large buttercream-colored ghost.

“Guess who I met in town? We have guests!” Fleet sang out as they entered. The sitting ghost lifted out of their slouch, attentive. Feist’s soul gave a sharp lurch of surprise when the doll twisted its head around to face them.

“Greetings, cousins,” said the cream-colored ghost in a velvety contralto, their gaze bouncing from Feist to Napster curiously.

“Can I introduce you? I’m gonna introduce you,” Fleet prompted as Napster and Feist remained mired in shyness. “Meet Feisttablook and Napstablook.”

Now the ghost sprang clear off the floor, sticking out their arms with excitement. “Oh! Oh! Blooks! Welcome! I’ve been wanting to meet you. I’m Remhalciyoo. Call me Remi, please.”

The last part of the name struck a familiar note in Feist’s mind, but before it could expand into a full chord of understanding, the blue doll blinked and said in an airy alto, “Don’t mind me, I’m just a visiting friend. My name’s Harkmello.” Feisttablook’s thoughts fixated on them, soul ringing like a gong with excitement. This must be a corporeal ghost. Here, in this room, was the embodiment — em-body-ment! — of something long-desired but seemingly unattainable. Unattainable until now.

At receiving no response from Feist or Napster, Remi continued. “…Viyoo lineage. I’m the Reminiscing Ghost, child of the Halcyon Ghost, child of the Pensive Ghost. My parent’s parent was one of your parent’s parents. We’re family.”

Feisttablook and Napstablook remained quiet. They’d had a stunning number of revelations for one day, and now meeting a member of their family they’d never heard about tipped the balance from exciting to overwhelming.

Remhalciyoo’s wide-eyed smile faltered momentarily at the Blooks’ failure to respond, but Harkmello tilted their plush head in a gentle prompting gesture and Remi’s ebullience returned. “Here, this will make it clearer.” They threw a configuration of spectral lines, a gray attack, into the middle of the room. At the top a filled-in circle and a hollow circle formed a pair, joined by a line. “These symbols are Valorous and Pensive,” Remi explained. A line descended from the Pensive-symbol to another hollow circle, “This is Halcyon,” and from that one, another, “… and this is me.” From the adjoining of the Pensive-circle and Valorous-circle, a line fell to a half-shaded circle, “This is the first Blook, your parent I’m assuming, unless I’m missing one more parent-ghost in the middle here,” and two more descended directly from it, “… and this is you two.”

Feist studied the diagram. “So, so… so if our parent and your parent shared a parent, that means we’re actually cousins — like in the corporeal sense.” Feist’s eyes flicked to Harkmello in their plush body.

“Fifty percent,” murmured Napstablook.

“Yep, both valid ways to look at it,” Remi said. “Traditionally, our lineages probably wouldn’t interact much, but down here we can use all the family we can get, right? We share soul.”

Napstablook ventured forward from behind Feist, peeked at the faces of the surrounding ghosts and saw nothing frightening, and spoke up, voice quavering. “… our parent is Staid. And Happy won’t like it if you leave them out. You better draw them an extra-big circle.”

“Who? I have to write this down,” Remi exclaimed. The gray attack dissipated as they turned to the desk, rummaging through stacked papers.

Napstablook fidgeted and then twisted backwards to take in the rows of angled photographs. “You’re good at taking photos. It’s a shame the photos aren’t better at being taken.”

Remi’s head was phased into one of the desk’s drawers, so Fleet answered. “We don’t take them. Remember the photo I had at the restaurant? When I take back a ghost-hunter photo, and the ghost in the photo doesn’t care about destroying it but doesn’t want to keep it either, I bring it here.”

Napstablook bounced lightly. “You collect photographs? I like to do that too. Collect… Not photos, though. I don’t like the way they stare. I collect sounds… and music. And sometimes… I put the sounds together and it makes music…” Napstablook’s voice tapered into a whisper and they shrunk into themself, face lowering towards their belly.

Fleet crowed, “That’s awesome!” Napstablook straightened at the praise, cheeks glowing like fresh snow.

“Got any traditional ghost songs?” Remi asked, head perking out of the desk.

Napstablook’s voice was steady now, and louder. “Mostly water sounds so far. And a bunch of grunting from the Aarons. Tutting from the Woshuas. And lately I’ve been getting sounds from the TV. I want to get some spook songs while I’m here. But we heard so many different voices today… I just don’t know how I’m going to record them all. But I want to try.”

Remi placed a notebook on the floor in front of Napster and Feist and settled over it. “So what you do complements what I do. I’m a genealogist now, so I guess you could say I collect names. My goal is to build up a new set of records for all the ghosts who made it down here. Eventually I want to also help reconstruct the records that were lost with the Royal Library during the war.” They flipped to a fresh page and placed pencil tip to paper. “I started doing interviews a decade or so ago, and that’s how I learned that Valorous had a child with Pensive that came Underground after the war, and that their lineage was named Blook. By that time, though, they had already left Home, and none of the other ghosts knew where to find them. What did you say their name was again?”

“Stavalblook, the Staid Ghost. Because they’re boring. But it’s good, they like being boring.” Napstablook drew in close and lay next to Remi on the floor, posture relaxing. “And then there’s me, I’m the Napster, I feel good when I’m sleeping. Then here is Feisttablook, the Feisty Ghost, who likes to… um, feist… and the third one of us is Happstablook, the Happy Ghost, who likes to talk a lot and eat alcohol.”

Remi laid flawless rows of letters in the book. “I’ve never heard of any Blooks aside from your parent; until meeting you two today, of course. Has Happy ever come to New Home?”

“They were here yesterday. They were here for a week. They’re easy to recognize. They have eyes like the river. Because their eyes are always sparkling and going like this,” Napstablook batted their eyes, “Not like my eyes, that are like the river too, but because they’re wet and kind of salty. And their color is… I forget the word. Like the inside of a dog’s mouth. But soft and nice, and not with teeth.”

“Do you know of any pink ghost who visited the City in the last few days?” Remi asked Fleet.

Fleet flopped onto the ground next to the other two prone ghosts. “Nuh-uh. Unless… the other day I heard rumors of a ghost going to corporeal parties. I didn’t think much of it, you know the corporeal people downtown like to tell stories almost as much as us ghosts, but… maybe that was them? Do they spend a lot of time with corporeal people?”

Napstablook twitched their lower eyelids upwards to shrug. The three ghosts looked to Feisttablook.

Feist wasn’t paying attention to their conversation, but was absorbed in looking surreptitiously at the ghost in the blue plush doll. As the attention in the room switched suddenly Feist looked away, but Harkmello had noticed.

“Oh! Am I making you uncomfortable, looking like this?” They ducked their head, violet blush touching the cheeks of the soft, elongated fabric head.

“No! No, no,” Feist protested. “That’s not it. It’s just… that… I want to be corporeal too.” The words came out in a rush and sat in the middle of the room. Feist’s heart felt raw and exposed. Every moment of silence was like a searing cold Snowdin wind.

Harkmello smiled, button eyes crinkling. “Oh, okay! I’m glad you’re not uncomfortable. I’m not really corporeal, though. I’m just inside this body temporarily, I haven’t fused with it or anything.” Their response was easy, careless except for a note of embarrassment from having been the subject of someone else’s misunderstanding. They looked back to the cluster of ghosts around the notebook.

“Wait. Wait. WAIT!” Feist’s voice rose, pinched into a shriek. The ghosts on the floor, Napstablook included, turned their heads up to stare. “I want to become corporeal. I want to become corporeal. I want to become corporeal.” Out of all the pent-up thoughts and held-back words, the only ones accessible were that simple statement. It wasn’t that easy to say it, after having it pushed deep inside, burning ulceric holes, needing to expel it, but knowing no one could understand. Even now, facing a semi-corporeal ghost, Feist still felt lost, different, alone. Even now, it wasn’t easy to say, so it couldn’t be that easy to ignore.

The doll-ghost tilted their head in a respectful gesture of acknowledgment, although their eyes flicked away from Feist and their voice pinged with awkwardness at the outburst. “I hope you find a nice body, then.”

Feist felt a shrinking, like a snail shriveling at the touch of salt. Having finally revealed the secret and having that honesty rejected, coddled, infantilized, was worse than hiding. Feist felt more alone than before.

Remi peeled themself off the floor, frowning in concern and eyes kind but somber. “I think I understand. Your parent, Staid, they’re the child of the Valorous Ghost. I’m not surprised if they’ve got… um, issues, around the idea of becoming corporeal, because of… what happened.” They let the allusion hang.

In the silence, Feist thought, _Now I’m not just alone, I’m also a freak_. Worse, none of the other ghosts questioned the reference. Seeing this shameful, shocking event from the Blook family’s past treated as common knowledge hurt more than listening to a retelling. Feist’s ectoplasmic color shifted from yellow through mustard to scalding red.

“Please don’t be upset,” Harkmello soothed, now looking steadily at Feist. “You have no reason to feel bad. Becoming corporeal is a very personal thing, and ghosts all approach it differently.”

Realization was slow to come, but it finally trickled through Feist’s emotions. The secret had been spoken aloud in public but nobody was angry, nobody was leaving; so, maybe, nobody was disgusted. The angry red color faded to a tender chick-yellow, and like a river overflowing its banks at spring melt, tears rolled from Feist’s eyes.

“I’ve got an unusual approach myself, I suppose,” Hark said brightly, drawing the attention in the room to themself and away from Feist. “I have a bunch of different bodies, and I like them all, but I’m not attached to any one strongly enough to fuse with it. At least, not yet. Do you want to see them?”

Napstablook rose up from between Fleet and Remi with a note of wonder. “Oh… you collect bodies?”

Feist was still for what seemed (to Feist) forever, but was only a moment, and gave a slow, cautious nod. There was still a chance Hark was playing at empathy, Feist thought, but the reward of incarnation was too great not to take the risk.

“My place is just downstairs. Come on, we can phase through the floor.” Hark settled their blue plush body comfortably against the wall to avoid an awkward fall, and they sank out of it through the floor. The other four ghosts followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience, readers! And thank you for reading.  
> The next two chapters will be faster in coming out (likely both in the month of January)... there's one more set in New Home City, and then back to Blook Acres.
> 
> The last third of this chapter was co-written by my beta reader, because it's one thing to imagine what it's like to hold and then share a secret of that magnitude, another to have lived it. Her tumblr is at i-am-river.tumblr.com  
> 


	4. Bodies

Phasing through the floor into the room below, Feisttablook almost landed directly on top of a pink plush doll and shifted to settle at comfortable floating-height above bare floor before looking around. Harkmello’s home followed the same floor dimensions as the home shared by Remhalciyoo and Flederhoom above, but was vertically roomier without the sloping slice of the roof. It was partitioned by a sky-blue curtain, and the resulting cordoned-off section became crowded as the five ghosts descended and slotted their ectoplasmic forms between the objects already occupying the space. Its window was shaded by a close neighboring building, so Harkmello lit a candle, casting a warm cheerful light that reflected off polished wood to be drunk in by fabrics.

Although it was expected, Feist felt a cool splash of disappointment at seeing Harkmello’s ectoplasmic form, the edges going translucent when backlit by candlelight. Hark turned a welcoming smile at Feist; their eyes were smallish but observant and kind, and their color lavender.

“Let me introduce you to my flat-mates,” Harkmello said to Napstablook and Feisttablook, and chuckled. They floated to one corner of the room, making a half do-si-do with Flederhoom to squeeze past. In the corner was a bear-shaped doll, about a foot between its frayed ears and its shiny worn-velvet-soled feet. It must have had a button nose at one time, given the loose thread on its muzzle, but it was long-since lost; its eyes were scuffed and one looked to have toothmarks. “My first body,” Hark said. “I found it beside a path just outside the city. Who knows who left it there — a dog, maybe. Probably human-made: look at the cartoonish shape of the face. You can see it’s seen a lot of love, or a lot of rough living — probably both. I’d seen corporeal ghosts when I was small, so I knew inhabiting an object was something that could be done. I tried it out with this body just to see how it felt, and it felt nice, so I walked it home. I grew too big for it pretty quickly, but I’ve kept it always.” They touched its head. “Sentimental.”

They turned just to the left, indicating an everyman-style plush doll, over three feet tall, the warm brown of a cup of black tea. “My number-one body. I saw it in a store years ago and fell in love. I had to scrape for weeks to afford it.”

Feist edged closer, hesitant, looking between Hark and the body. Hark nodded. “Have a closer look, Feisty. You can touch it, if you want.” Feist extended an arm and felt the rich softness of the furred fabric, the firmness of the stuffing underneath; examined the scuffmarks on the feet _(to have weight, to rest that weight on the ground, to walk — the thought of it!_ ); the slightly darker color inside the seams that betrayed that it was faded with age despite excellent care. A well-made body like this would be tough enough to endure physical work, and could wear all kinds of clothes. The furred fabric wouldn’t do in damp, muddy Waterfall, but the shape was appealing.

Feist looked up and caught Hark’s eye. They were watching, not anxiously, but attentively — their encouraging Feist to touch it was an act of trust, not carelessness. Hark’s eyes crinkled with pride at seeing the body admired. Feist’s persistent doubt ebbed at their positive reaction: this truly was Hark’s body, and even though their soul was apart from it, it was part of their self. Seeing this gave Feist a sense of admiration for and kinship with Hark; but at the same time, the rise of new type of doubt. _Can I ever have that?_ Feist thought, _Do I even deserve it?_

Hark continued. “I use it for work too.” Napster and Feist stared with uncomprehending eyes. “Oh! I should explain what I do. I’m a listener. You know, everyone needs to voice their thoughts sometimes, but sometimes people have secrets or feelings or dilemmas that they feel uncomfortable sharing with family or friends. Even though things have gotten better lately, with the Dreemurrs’ move here, and watching their children grow up, and the hope of breaking the Barrier, there’s always a need. The aftereffects of the War and the stress of living underground still weigh on folks.” Remi nodded in agreement. Hark continued. “I don’t offer much in the way of advice, but I’ve heard a lot of things over the years, and I promise confidentiality. Sometimes I bring people back here; sometimes I visit their home; sometimes we find someplace else to talk. Anyway, generally my clients have an easier time confiding in someone who looks cute and cuddly. A few times I allowed someone to suggest a body for me to inhabit, but that turned out… weird.” Hark’s mouth pursed at some distasteful memory, but they shook off the expression almost before it could be seen.

“Then I’ve got the blue body you saw upstairs, and this one,” Hark indicated the pink doll beside Feist. Its shape was identical to the bow-tie-wearing doll, but this one was adorned with a cloth flower. “It makes no difference to me, but some individuals of monster types that have men and women are very particular about preferring to talk to me when I look one way or the other.”

“Like… women want to talk to this one? And men to the one upstairs?” Feist asked.

“That’s usually it. Unless it’s to practice something they want to say to a friend or a family member, then I’ll inhabit whatever matches that person. But I don’t do that if it’s about romantic feelings.” The shadow of a bad memory slid across Hark’s features again, and was banished again just as quickly as Hark turned to the next object.

“And then sometimes, some people feel shy about talking to another monster at all. For them…” Hark extended an arm to indicate a massive wooden Ouija board leaning against the wall, “… someone found this beauty in the trash dump, washed down from aboveground. The seller unloaded it for cheap, said it was cursed. Turned out there really was a spirit residing in it. He and I spent a few days chatting, commiserating about how awful humans can be, and then he decided to move on. When I asked nicely, he let me keep it.”

“And finally…” Hark swooped to the curtain dividing the room and pulled it aside with a flourish. The other half of the room was just large enough for a couch, deep cushions permanently dimpled with the memories of previous posteriors, and a kerosene lamp on a stand. Hark lit the lamp, dappling the room with light through its elegant embossed glass lamp chimney, and then, with a theatrical wink, flew an arc and belly-flopped into the couch.

Remi and Fleet smirked at each other and leaped to land on the cushions’ surface in turn, controlling their velocity to hit with nearly-solid fwumps. Hark’s head emerged between the two with a squeal of protest and headbutted each in the side. Napstablook winced at the roughhousing, but all three city ghosts were laughing heartily. It was clear by now that Hark’s “I’m just a visiting friend” had been a polite fiction, to step back and allow full focus on the meeting of Blooks and Viyoo. Feist felt amazement at these free-spirited city ghosts, who shared an obvious bond of intimacy and comfort even though they didn’t share soul; and a pang of jealousy, contrasting them with Happy, who turned a pleasing face to the world but could be so distant and contentious with Feist.

“Can you move it?” Feist asked Harkmello, poking the couch with one arm.

“No. It’s too big and heavy. It feels nice to possess it anyway. You know, kind of stretch out and relax.”

Hark settled on the seat’s surface, between Remi and Fleet, and beckoned Feist and Napster to join them. Napster snuggled in next to Remi and closed their eyes, leaning their head against their cousin’s side and giving a deep sigh. Fleet offered their spot to Feist and alighted on the arm instead.

Remi leaned back to look at the ceiling. “My turn? Viyoo ghosts do things the old-fashioned way, so I’m predictable. One day it’ll just be my time. I’ll find a vessel that calls my name, and I’ll know that I’ve been incorporeal long enough. Some ghosts think it’s sad for one part of life to come to an end, but it’s only natural… and being corporeal means new sensations, new abilities, so it’s actually something to look forward to. But I’m personally just not ready, yet.”

Fleet spoke. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready. I rely on phasing all the time, and I like being able to be invisible. Flight can get tricky too, depending on the body. I mean, this is just me speaking for me, you’ve gotta do for you, but… I kind of feel like a ghost who becomes corporeal, who learns new ways of being in the world, they must be brave. If that makes sense.”

Hark and Remi gave small nods, receiving the words without judgement. Feist felt dizzy as the lingering fear of rejection and ridicule dissipated. In some ways these stories were similar to what Feist felt… but somehow different, as well. It was that undefinable difference that left Feist reluctant to share more.

There was a minute of quiet before Remi leaned forward to pose a question. “So… What’s your plan? How long are you staying in New Home?”

With effort, Feist shifted out of the mode of preoccupying thoughts and heavy relief and into interaction and response. “We’ve finished all the work we needed to get done, thanks to Fleet’s help.” Fleet wiggled the skirt of their ectoplasm triumphantly. “So I guess… I don’t know. We’ve got a month before we have to return to Waterfall.” Remi nodded in encouragement as Feist thought. “Last time we were here in the City we were all together, all four Blooks. It wasn’t for this long though. We toured some, but since we had just bought our delivery cart and we didn’t want to pay the parking fee, we took turns watching over it, and we slept with it.” Feist paused, remembering, amazed at how different the City had come to feel in a single day. “This visit… there’s not much of a plan yet.”

“If you’ll allow, I’ve got a plan,” Remi said. “Stay here with us.” Feist pitched forward to look at them; Remi’s expression was genuine and open. They cut off Feist’s attempt to protest. “It’s not a selfless offer! I’m going to grill you, you know. About your family, about Waterfall, about Home City… you’ll get fed up with answering all my questions. But these other two can give you something in return, I think.”

Fleet bounced on the couch arm. “I know this city. I can tell you the best places to find songs and sounds to record, Napster.” Napstablook smiled broadly, half-asleep already, slumped against Remi.

Hark nodded. “There are a few corporeal ghosts living here in the City. We can go talk to them together, Feisty.”

Feist nodded, relief hitting a crescendo and blossoming into hope and anticipation.

So the Blook siblings enjoyed an idyllic stay adjacent to Ghost Town. Napstablook spent most of their days roaming the city with their tape recorder and capturing the sounds and songs of ghost life. There was a freedom and joy in those sounds they could not find on Blook Acres; but it was not better than their home, just different, and the difference felt nice. When Feisttablook wasn’t escorting Napstablook around the city, Feist and Hark were visiting with corporeal ghosts. The variety of ways ghosts could be corporeal astounded Feist. Some fused with their bodies immediately, others never. Some chose strong, insensitive bodies for specific tasks at construction sites and laboratories. Some spent their days incorporeal and only inhabited a body alone in their home. And some, which struck a chord of longing in Feist, fused with bodies simply because it made them feel better about themselves, made them feel like they finally fit with the world.

As the weeks passed, the Blooks agreed: their visit was everything Remi and Hark and Fleet said it would be.

Until three weeks later, when Flederhoom returned from messenger work one day with their eyes dark with shock and brimming with tears. Remi went stiff, trembling in empathy as soon as they entered, and asked what was wrong.

Fleet curled up against their side silently.

From outside the room, from the far side of Ghost Town, came a high keening wail. It approached, climbed a crescendo of numbers and volume. The town erupted with a collective cry of ghosts in mourning.

* * * * *

Several days later, Remhalciyoo slumped beside the desk in a position that hadn’t changed for hours. Harkmello lay asleep in the niche where ceiling met floor.

Feisttablook and Napstablook floated in, Feist carrying the Blooks’ knapsack. Napstablook pitched in the air at the sight of Remi still listless, and knocked their tape recorder against the edge of the door as they flowed around it. Hark came awake with a yelp, going diaphanous for an instant before their eyes found the Blooks. Feist glided to them and produced a ghost sandwich from the knapsack. Hark gave a reedy sigh and reached for it. They took a bite, swallowed, and spoke. “Thank you. Somehow it was hard to find the energy to even get back from my last client, even though they weren’t far away. I feel… weighed down. But at least I was able to help someone.” They paused. They took another bite of sandwich.

“Is there anything else I can do?” asked Feist. Having a task to focus on helped in controlling thoughts and emotions. Doing anything was better than having time to think.

Hark lowered their eyes, then raised them again to Feist’s face. “Stay here for now. Talk with me.” They spoke around their next bite. “How is Ghost Town?”

“Not much change since the other day,” said Feist. “You don’t hear as much of the mourning songs. People are starting to come out of shock. They’re starting to talk about what happened, what’s going to happen.”

Hark hesitated. “Any news of the queen?”

“… nothing.”

Meanwhile, Napstablook was holding out a ghost sandwich to Remi. Remi sighed and their line of sight flickered away, found another point on the ceiling to fix on. Napster twisted to look back at Hark and Feist, arms still proffering the sandwich, their eyes releasing tears that hit the floor with a hiss.

“You have a lot of traditional ghost songs recorded by now, don’t you?” said Hark. “Play us one of those. A sad song. It may sound counterintuitive, but it helps.” Napstablook fiddled with their recorder and hit play, releasing a melody. It was a minor-key warble, a tone that sank through depths of resignation before rising into sharp tones of anguish. Feist rested on the floor to listen.

Remi stirred, little more than a hiccough. Hark’s eyes prompted Napstablook. They hit rewind, heard two notes before hitting rewind again, found another melody. This one was more lyrical, with a repeated refrain of longing for sunlight, for lost loved ones, for lost hope. Hark turned their face to the wall and shuddered.

Napstablook shut off the music, “… oh no…”

Hark turned back and gave them a watery smile. “Don’t stop, please. You’re not hurting me. I’ve got too many feelings inside, from everyone I’ve been listening to. I need to feel them properly so I can get them out. You’re helping.” Napstablook nodded, and pressed play again.

A different type of song filled the room. This song was sultry, a series of purring moans punctuated by a coquettish gasp. A courtship song.

Hark’s eyes popped open with shock. Feist froze. Napstablook, failing to read their reactions, swayed to the melody.

“Turn it off,” Feist’s voice was soft but stern. “Turn it off. TURN IT OFF.” Napstablook shut off the music and opened their mouth in confusion, brow crinkling with unmoored guilt.

Remi blinked and shifted through shades of beige, regaining alertness in stages like a diver surfacing from a great depth. In the quiet left in the music’s wake, Hark’s breathing was audible. Their half-closed eyes played over the three other ghosts in turn, until Remi met their gaze. Hark’s cheeks bloomed with a violet blush, and they gave a mortified “oh,” and phased away through the floorboards.

Feist winced, anticipating a reprimand from the senior ghost in the room. Instead, Remi floated softly off the floor, turned mechanically, approached their desk, and leaned over it. There was a held breath, and then a shaky sob, and then a soft crackle.

It took a few agonizingly slow moments for Feist to perceive what was happening and react. In the time it took to bodily force Remi away from the desk the layer of paper on the desktop was already discoloring and shrinking, bathed in acidic tears.

Feist curled around Remi as they cried thin tears that seared marks into the wooden floor. Remi shook with sobs for a few minutes. Words followed.“It’s too much. All those ghosts lost in the War. There were so many names to collect, so many family names that don’t connect to anyone anymore. We had just started to build families down here, and now it’s happening all over again. They’re making new lineages. Our family trees are grass. My work is a waste of time. I can’t keep up with it. I can’t.”

Feist nestled Remi against the wall until their sobs abated, and spoke with fierceness. “Your work is more important than ever. When you help us remember, you’re giving us all something solid to hold on to. Don’t you dare, don’t you dare, don’t you dare give up.”

Napstablook hung back at a short distance, politely restricting their tears to the round low-acid droplets that wouldn’t stain the floor. “Nothing is ever all bad,” they ventured. “Even if something is totally terrible, you can tell stories about it later and impress your friends.”

Remi snuffled and rubbed their eyes with their arms. Feist took heart and said in a fortifying brisk tone, “Come on, come on, come ON! There’s something you need to do here, now. If you concentrate on doing it you’ll feel better.”

“Need here…” Remi repeated vaguely, and Feist realized that Remi wasn’t thinking of the soggy browned papers on the desk as had been intended. Remi looked between Feist and Napstablook. “That song you played. That last one. It was quality audio. Loud. What were you doing close to someone singing like that?”

Napstablook looked down at the fidgeting edge of their ectoplasm. “We heard some ghosts singing like that in Ghost Town,” they said in a small voice. “I’d never heard a song like that before. It has a lot of emotion.”

“A lot of something,” Remi muttered, and turned a pointed stare at Feist.

“Napstablook isn’t affected by it,” Feist spat out. “See? They just like the way it sounds. They wanted to record it. I had to follow and make sure they were safe.”

Remi’s stare bore down. It was uncannily like Staid’s suspicious-parent-stare, but possibly even worse coming from two eyes. Feist put on a stoic expression, but ectoplasmic color control wasn’t the same skillset as physical ectoplasmic control, and Remi’s eyes narrowed as Feist blushed orange with guilt under the scrutiny.

“Napster,” said Remi, “you really don’t feel any different now than you did before you heard that singing?”

Napstablook went partially transparent. “… I feel kind of bad now? But mostly confused… Am I supposed to feel different?”

“Do me a favor. Phase downstairs and tell Hark… that everything’s okay, and they don’t need to feel embarrassed. And that they don’t need to worry about me either.”

Napstablook phased down and away, and Remi turned back to Feist.

“You were getting involved. With the courtship. Don’t lie.”

Feist stammered, a row of excuses and reasons lining up like an ectoplasmic attack volley: the innocent and selfless reasoning they had already provided foremost, then stretching back through natural curiosity and into subconscious reasons that Feist couldn’t even admit to self, the deepest buried of those being: _maybe returning with a baby would make Staid so preoccupied and pleased that they wouldn’t react badly to the news that one of their children was going to become corporeal_.

“No,” Feist lied with a casual tone. “No!” Sharp, protesting the indignity of the question. And after a long pause and another long stare from Remi, a creaky whisper: “N… n… nobody wants me.”

Remi sighed long, their large eyes going soft with pity. Feist wasn’t sure whether to bristle or be relieved that the expected berating was turning into advice. “Don’t think like that. It’s just that you’re young. Souls can carry all sorts of things: bad memories, bad habits, self-destructive thoughts. Those things can get transferred when souls get really close. It doesn’t make someone a bad ghost, or even a bad parent; but if you’re not mature enough to know how to deal with those things, people can get hurt.” Feist huffed, looking away. Remi continued, “I know I’m not your parent, but I’m not that much younger than they are. And you’re still my guest in this city. I don’t want to send you home with a bunch of new phobias.”

Remi lightened their tone at the end of their statement, but Feist only sulked. “Maybe… I don’t even have to go home.”

The parental eye returned, with a voice to match it, authoritative in a way Remi hadn’t spoken to the Blooks throughout their visit. “You are going to go home. It’s time. And… the news… it’s got to have reached the whole kingdom by now. Your family needs you.”

“I don’t know about ‘need.’ I’d be happy enough to know about ‘want.’” Feist felt broken, an anomaly in a family of non-corporeal contentment. Bringing up the subject of becoming corporeal would mean no longer being part of family.

Remi drew close. “I know you’re nervous about telling your parent that you’re going to try to become corporeal. But you can’t just run away. Wouldn’t it be terrible to never know? If your parent is okay, then you don’t have to worry about it anymore. And if they’re not okay… I’ll have words for them.” Feist looked up into Remi’s eyes, then leaned against them. Remi said softly, into the top of Feist’s head, “I said you can’t stay. I never said you can’t come back.”

Before Feist could fully grasp what Remi had said, or process any of the emotions that followed, Fleet blew in through the wall, so excited their ectoplasmic edge whirled like a gyroscope. “Hey! Got something amazing to show you. Both of you. And Hark. Where’s Hark? Where’s the other Blook?”

“Just downstairs,” Remi said. Fleet dove at the floor to phase through. “Hey!” said Remi, stopping them short just before they disappeared fully. “What’s going on?”

“Mmmm got some bodies,” Fleet chirped, and ducked under the floor.

* * *

The trip, following a hurrying Fleet, was paradoxically longer than it had to be: Fleet urged them to be quick, but kept getting overexcited and disappearing ahead so that they had to wait until they doubled back and retrieved them. Finally they all arrived at a small-fronted shop, its inside crowded with racks of clothes and bolts of cloth and filled with the scent of cotton and glue. An elderly rabbit met them just inside the door, beckoned them in, and guided them to a curtained-off square of floor. He drew back the partition. They were dressing dummies, sturdy cotton-and-stuffing forms mounted on wooden stands, all sharing a simple and long-muzzled version of the familiar “everyman” face, unadorned aside from button eyes. They stood a little more than a meter high, plenty of accommodation for an adult ghost’s soul without being too big to move; not even too big to lift in flight.

“How much?” Hark breathed, and Feist’s soul sank at the question.

“No charge,” the rabbit lifted his hand to brush away the question. “See, I got a visit from a newly-minted royal guard earlier. She said they knew my shop makes good dummies and they want to commandeer them for training. But I lost too much family in the War. If the kingdom’s going into another… I don’t make weapons. I want no part.” The rabbit paused. He rubbed a paw against the back of his neck. “It wouldn’t feel right to deny the king a request. I have to show him respect even though I know he’s making a mistake, but…” He turned his back on the dummies. “If the dummies just… happened to walk away… I could hardly be blamed.” The shopkeeper stepped away and closed the partition.

Remi approached first. Their ectoplasmic form absorbed into the cotton cloth and disappeared, and the button eyes blinked to life. “This is a good body.” Their voice held wonder. “I could spend the rest of my life in a body like this.”

Hark’s voice came from outside the partition, speaking to the shopkeeper, their voice quavering. “You don’t know how much this means to me. I have bodies already, but… I use them to listen to people who have problems, and in these past few days it’s like their problems soak into the fabric, I can feel it afterwards. This body won’t have any painful memories attached to it. This body will be mine, and only mine.”

Fleet was nudging Napstablook. “Go ahead, try one out. You don’t have to be shy, you heard what the guy said.” But Napstablook shrunk back, wide-eyed and wary. After a minute Fleet rounded them. “You really don’t want one?” Napstablook lowered their eyes, looked side to side to indicate the negative. “If you’re sure, and you’re sure you’re sure,” Fleet said, “I’ll keep the last one for myself. For the future, maybe. A body this good is hard to come by.”

Feist held back a moment. Here was the very opportunity Feist had been dreaming about. A body. A real body that could be inhabited. There would be weight and solidity. Moving would no longer feel like a dulled disconnection from the world. There would be air pressure and cool moisture and warm light. The mulching shovel would hold real weight, not just a strain on ectoplasmic projection. Maybe, Feist thought, the emotional numbness would also vanish. For so long Feist had felt awkward and uncomfortable and angry. Cheated anger. Irrational anger. Helpless anger. But this, a body, might ease that; maybe Feist did not have to be the angry ghost.

Thoughts of Staid held Feist back. How would such a reserved, stoic parent react to one of their children intentionally taking corporeal form, after their family history? How could one explain the driving need for corporeality to a ghost who would dissociate from ectoplasmic discomfort?

But, if Feist did not take this opportunity, this impossible and rare opportunity, when would there be another?

Unable to hold back longer, Feist moved towards the dummy, circled it, examined it. The cloth was a simple beige canvas, but it was good-quality and looked easy to clean, an essential if it was to be used at the farm. The body was tough but flexible, able to move without risk of tearing or breaking. It would not be a nuisance on the farm; it might even prove to be an asset. Yes, imagine the benefit of being able to just move and grip with the body, to perform chores without having to overexert ectoplasmic energy. Feist could explain the decision to take corporeal form as one of pragmatism. Surely Staid would approve of that reasoning.

Feist eased into the dummy. The feeling of mass was instant and unexpected. Feist and the dummy wobbled on the wooded stand; but it settled. The world seemed more concrete already, even before fusing. There was a feeling of finally being connected to everything: the hard wood of the shop floor, the slight strain on the stiches from the stuffed cotton, the warm air against the fabric, and from within Feist, the giggly almost-manic joy of comfort.

Was the body perfect? Of course not. There were things Feist would have changed in the design — a more rounded head, more like the cute version of the everyman design used for smaller dolls; a lower center of gravity; curved mammalian-type lines — but it was so much better than having no body. As Happy liked to say, when you’re begging you don’t get to criticize what you’re handed. So it wasn’t perfect, but it was still right.

Remi lifted their body off the floor and floated it over. The cloth face was stiff, but a smile shone in the button eyes. “This will change a lot for you.”

Feist nodded, sort of… the body quivered a little.

Hark, now inside the partition and inside a dummy, smirked at Feist’s awkwardness, but not unkindly. “Don’t worry about the stiffness. You have to break it in a little. It’ll get more comfortable the longer you inhabit it.”

Remi continued. “I hope you can find a bit more happiness now. Especially when you go back to Blook Acres.”

The body seemed a bit heavier as Remi spoke, as if the thought of home tugged its shoulders down. “But, but, but… just a little more time, to get used to it, like Hark said…”

“No,” Remi said. “You’ll be expected. It’s time to go home. But what a tremendous thing you get to bring with you… and think how joyous it will be when you come back to visit us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> River (i-am-river.tumblr.com) co-wrote this chapter with me, adding invaluable sections about Feist's inner thoughts and experience of the new body.


	5. Distraction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second of two new chapters posted today -- don't miss the previous chapter, "Bodies".

Happy pushed the unresponsive Staid around the last bend of tunnel before Gerson’s house. His breath came in short, ragged gasps, and he wished Feist were there to help. Gerson was outside his door, with his back to them; he was locking the door with intense concentration. Moving slowly was his default, being a tortoise, but this was different: he moved as if his skin had been replaced with canvas. His fingers fumbled with the key; it slipped out of his grasp, bounced on the hard-packed path, and fell into the mud. He looked from the lock to the key, let out a long sigh, and turned to retrieve it. Happy saw his eye set deep with worry, his jaw set in a hard line.

Gerson caught sight of the ghosts. His worried expression fled like insects scattering under light, and he forced an ‘all’s well’ lilt into his voice.

“Kiddos!” he exclaimed, wearing his signature grin again. “S’been a long time, what… a month now? Busy harvest this year, yeah? I was jes’ headin’ out to visit you. Saved me a trip!”

Happstablook caught his breath and replied. “Sighthound came by. He told us... that…” The slip of Gerson’s smile and his brief, grim nod killed Happy’s hope that they had been misinformed. The weight of that truth left him momentarily silent. After a beat, he continued, “I thought we should talk to you.”

Gerson nodded. He inclined his head and raised an eyebrow at Staid. “I tell ya’, this kid o’ yours got smarts like a stubbed toe.”

Stavalblook remained impassive, eye unfocused.

Gerson turned back to Happy as if he’d gotten an affirmative response. “Maybe you could save me another trip?” he asked, and pointed at the dropped key. “The older I get the farther away the ground moves. I could get down there, but I’d have to pack an overnight bag. It’s a bother.”

Happy scooped up the key and handed it to Gerson, who slipped it into his breast pocket. He turned to Staid. “I’m headed to Grillby’s. The veterans ‘round here are meetin’ up. You should join. You maybe didn’t hold a sword, but you fought your own battle back then. Though, you won yours.”

Staid’s voice was lifeless. “They don’t know me. When they see me they see someone else’s mistakes.”

Happstablook jerked as if he’d touched a magic bullet. Gerson regarded Staid for a long moment, one clawed hand kneading the knuckles of the other. Then he turned to Happy and his expression softened. “How are you doin’?”

Happy’s response was pure reflex. “I’m great!”

Gerson frowned. “You sure? You look a lil’ pale.” There was a subtle narrowing to Gerson’s eye, a slight forward motion of his head. He was trying to communicate something.

Happy looked inward, into a maelstrom of fears, and tried to pick out a response that would please Gerson. “I’m… a little tired?” Gerson gave an almost-imperceptible nod; that was the right response. Happy steeled himself and looked inward again. “And… hungry.” As he said it he realized it was true.

Conscious thought flared back into Staid’s eye, and they focused on Happy. “Oh no… I was getting food for you. You didn’t eat it. You’ve been working all day and then you came here. You haven’t had a break.”

Gerson lumbered forward and gave Staid a pat on the back. “And here I was tryin’ to get you to keep me company, when you got more important things to do. You better go take care of your family.”

“Oh… yes…” Now Staid herded Happy, pushing him back towards Blook Acres. Happy twisted to look back at Gerson just before they rounded the tunnel wall. Gerson gave him a firm, encouraging nod and a wink. As soon as the ghosts disappeared his expression fell back into sorrowful, troubled lines.

* * *

The two ghosts hurried through the dim, gritty tunnels towards home. Now that Staid had been broken out of their thought-paralysis they dredged conversation through one dark speculation after another. “Imagine what the capitol must be like now. Everyone will be afraid and angry.” They mulled on it a moment. “Just like before.” 

Happy parried each worry. “We monsters have made it Underground this far; we can get through anything.”

“You don’t know what it was like. People will turn on each other.”

“But we have each other.”

“Corporeal people will turn on ghosts.”

“That doesn’t even make sense. Ghosts have nothing to do with what happened.” He swallowed the words ‘this time’.

“Napstablook is going to be so scared. They’ll disappear. They’ll hide.”

“They’ve done that before, and they were fine.”

“They’ll get lost. Nobody will be able to find them.”

“But Napster is with Feisttablook. Feist’ll protect them.”

“Trying to protect them will get Feist into a fight.”

“Feist is going to protect Napster, and they know they have to stay in control to do that.”

“Someone will use magic on them. They’ll get hurt.”

“Taking care of each other is what’s most important; that’s what you taught us. Feist isn’t going to let anything bad happen to either one of them.”

Staid fell silent for a few moments; Happy’s soul fluttered sickly, unsure if they were absorbing his affirmations or sinking back into unresponsiveness. Then they said, barely audible, “Poor Toriel. I can’t imagine what she’s feeling.”

There was no answer to that. 

Happy seized on the one bright word. “Toriel! She’s always kept Asgore in line, right? Right. She keeps the whole kingdom in line. Things look crazy right now, but she’ll make things right.” As he said it, he wondered if he was reassuring Staid or himself.

* * *

On arrival at Blook Acres, Staid rushed them into the blue house and yanked open the refrigerator. They produced dish after dish, stuffing Happy until his head spun. Then they approached the TV. The memory of the dire news he’d seen earlier, the anticipation of how Staid would react, gripped Happy’s insides so tight he was afraid all the ghost food would come right back out. By a stroke of luck the newscaster was receiving an additional report at the exact moment the picture blinked on; there was only a moment of their stoic face frowning offscreen before Staid flipped the channel and the house was filled with a warm flash of colorful light and maudlin song.

“I love this movie!” Happy crowed, his voice garishly loud in the close space of the room.

“You hate this movie,” Staid responded. Their voice was hoarse, but it was their proper voice, gentle and kind, and even held an echo of humor. It was not the dry and dead words they had spoken in front of Gerson, or the grinding prediction of catastrophes from the path back home.

“I love to hate this movie,” Happy corrected, basking in relief. “It’s kind of a big deal, since it was one of the first movies made Underground. It’s not really the movie’s fault that it’s so terrible. A bunch of the children of actors who were in it live in New Home, I met some at… uh… When I was vacationing in the capital I went to a public show of it. But at this screening, some of the audience had a whole script of extra lines to make fun of it while the movie is playing. I’ve got some of the jokes memorized. Wanna hear? It’s… kind of rude in parts, though. You know. Corporeal jokes.”

Staid managed a small smile. “I’ve been around longer than you, remember. I’m not that fragile. I’ll survive a few corporeal jokes.”

Giddy with relief, Happy launched into the script. He unpacked every joke he could imagine; he described the actors and relayed every bit of gossip that had been attached to the production; he ran down trains of thought to describe other monster-produced movies and shows.

His thoughts started to become elusive and his words started to run together. The adrenaline-like force that had driven him ebbed and gave way to exhaustion. His eyes were closing. Staid touched him with their arm in reassurance and guided him to lie down. As soon as he was horizontal he lost the will to fight for consciousness, and with the TV laying a muting fabric of noise over his thoughts, he fell asleep.

* * *

Hours later he came awake at a light touch. Staid’s voice was a bare whisper. “Happy? I need you.” 

The TV was off. The darkness inside the house was complete; it left Happy feeling disoriented and unmoored. “… sure. Anything. Could we turn on a light?”

“Let’s not. I just want to hear your voice. Tell me what you were telling me before. About our store. The one we’re going to have.”

“You mean the store in the city?”

“That’s it.”

“It’s going to be fantastic! We’re going to be raising a lot more snails by that time, of course, because all of our new customers are going to tell their friends. We’re going to have to ramp up production big-time. That won’t be hard, though, since we’ll have more workers and better equipment. The fluorescent lights are already helping, and we’ll be able to afford really good food for the snails, plenty of vitamins and minerals. But we’re also going to be growing other crops. Herbs would be perfect, right? Compact growing space, and we wouldn’t be competing with Gerson’s orchard or vegetable garden. I bet he’d have good advice on what types of herbs to grow, though. We could work a deal with him, sell his crabapples in our shop too; they’ll fetch a higher price in the city. We’ll have to hire some more help with transportation, crabapples are heavy, but that’s no problem. Maybe the Tem Shop would want to make some sort of arrangement with us too? We could help boost all of Waterfall.”

“That sounds good. Tell me more.”

“I’m going to staff our store. I’ll work my salesmanship over the whole city, nobody will be able to resist my charm.”

“And Feisttablook?”

“They’re going to do a splendid job with the physical work of farming, like they always do. And they’re going to be training the new Blooks, teaching them all the best ways to make sure the snails and the plants are content and growing strong.”

“And Napstablook?”

“Best of all! They’re going to smile at the ledger book all the time because our accounts will be going up, up, up!”

“Tell me more.”

Happy had difficulty reading Staid’s emotion in the blank darkness from their quiet, quickly-spoken words. Their voice was… eager? No… strained? But at least not flat. Happy soldiered on.

“Napstablook is going to become famous for their music library, which is just going to keep getting bigger and better, since we’ll be able to afford better sound equipment. Monsters as far away as the Core will hear about the traditional ghost music they’ve recorded and want to hear it. Other ghost families will look up to us. Corporeal people will want to learn more about ghost culture. Blook Acres will be a place for nurturing culture as well as family and friendships and food. It’s going to be amazing!” 

“I hope that will happen. I believe it will happen. It’s going to happen.” Staid repeated the words firmly, making them into a mantra. “Tell me again.”

Happstablook spun out his affirmations about the future until they felt more real to him than the unseen house surrounding him. Fatigue crept over his senses again. His voice became detached, a meaningless drone to his own ears; he couldn’t concentrate without something to focus on visually. He sank into sleep again.

The next time he awoke, he was alone in the house; he could feel the absence. 

He didn’t bother to turn on the light, but phased through the wall. His eyes adjusted easily; he would have been in pain if the fluorescent lights had been on, but they had been turned off for the snails’ hibernation, and the fields were dusky. He checked in the other house, the one he shared with Feisttablook, but it was also empty.

He skirted the edges of the snail pens, searching, and found Staid beside the far pens that they had neglected to clean and prepare, whose edges were still coarse with weeds. Staid was floating still. They had gone pale; the length of the pen and the tunnel wall beyond were visible through their form. Their outline was hollow. The leaves just below them were singed thin and yellow by falling acid.

Happy crept up beside them. Staid didn’t react, but remained staring blankly over the pen at the wall. He pressed himself against their side, against one of the abscission scars from his own brood’s birth. He had nothing to say. Neither of them ever mentioned the babies again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kept my promise to post two chapters within the month of January! (Just barely!) Two months ago, as I was finalizing this chapter, my beta-reader and partner (i-am-river) said, "You need to include a chapter on what happened with Feist and Napstablook in the City first." Two chapters / three new characters / over 9,000 words later...  
> Please settle in and be welcome... this story will continue for a while. And as always, I welcome questions, comments, or critiques; my tumblr askbox is open.


	6. Looking for Hope

Days later Staid’s ectoplasmic edge still trailed close to the ground, and they could only reward Happstablook’s efforts to comfort them with shadowy smiles, as shallow and perfunctory as a greeting card. As the expected time of Feisttablook and Napstablook’s return approached, arrived, and receded behind the turn of a new day, and then another, Staid turned wraith. They wandered the length of Blook Acres and lingered faintly in the spaces between neglected snail pens. It was only by chance that Happy was closest to the tunnel in the direction of New Home City when the rattle of the Blook family’s delivery cart came bouncing off the stony walls.

Saturated with relief, Happy rounded the tunnel’s corner to meet them. There was Napstablook, keeping pace with the front of the rolling cart and looking worried — although Napstablook often looked worried, it was just the way their face was set up. Feisttablook was nowhere in sight, and Happy was choked with dread for a moment; but no, Napster looked worried but not stricken, so Feist must be okay. The person pulling the cart was a stranger, a yellowish-white furless person who strained against the handle while hopping on a single foot, their eyes fixed on the ground before the cart in concentration.

Happy approached, formulating a greeting and introduction. The stranger’s eyes, as shiny as mother-of-pearl — no, _literally mother-of-pearl_ — looked up and fixed on him. Became piercingly intense. Became completely familiar. Happy knew.

Happy’s capacity to worry had been nearly taxed to its limit in recent days, and he was filled with relief at his family’s return, so his first reaction was the bare excitement of encountering something new. Neither Staid’s lessons in ghostly manners nor studying the etiquette of corporeal societies gave him any knowledge of what to say in this situation. He leaped forward and exclaimed, “Feist!” with a bright note of amazement.

Feist’s gaze jerked away from him, swung back to the road. “Humans killed Asriel. Humans started another war. I won’t talk to anyone who supports humans.”

Happy shuddered back a full meter in the air. Napstablook’s gaze found him, their mouth opened in bewilderment and their eyes pooling with tears. Happy’s thoughts froze. He had watched Staid inexorably lose hope despite all his efforts, and he was desperate for any comfort or help. Blame and silent treatment would be unbearable. He turned sharply and raced back to Blook Acres ahead of the cart.

Staid was a faint greenish mirage beside the houses. They didn’t react to Happy’s approach until he gasped at them, “They’re back.” Staid saw Happy’s expression, shocked and pained when it should have been joyful, and gave a small high-pitched sound of fear. “They” could mean both of the traveling Blooks… or only one.

The rumble leaped in volume and the cart came into view around the corner. Staid rushed towards it. Napster saw Staid and the pain in their expression was washed out by a flood of relief. They leaped ahead, crossed the yard, and pressed themself against Staid’s side; Staid’s arms emerged and they held them, eye closed and face against their youngest child’s head.

Staid’s eye opened. They saw Feist. They knew. Their expression went blank.

Feisttablook dropped the cart handle; it shuddered against the ground, the vibrations traveling into Feist’s solid body through its wooden pedestal with a shock that reflected in the button eyes.

Feist took a slow breath and spoke with deliberate slowness to avoid stutter. “I missed you.” Staid didn’t react. Feist’s voice trembled, took on a high thin pitch. “I… I… I look different now.”

Staid surged forward and held Feist, just as they had held Napstablook. “I missed you too,” they murmured into the fabric.

Feist gasped, head drooping to rest on Staid’s head, and said the only other words that came. “I’m sorry…”

Staid held Feist closer. “No, don’t be. _I’m_ sorry. I should have said… something.” They drew back to look into Feist’s face, arms extended out front as if still in a hug. “I think I knew… a long time ago…” Their voice trailed to a distant whisper. “But… you’re so young…”

Feist shook the cloth head. “I know what you’re thinking. I know that for a lot of ghosts, becoming corporeal is the last part of their life. But it’s different for me. I feel like this is the _first_ part of my life. I finally feel like… like… like I’m really alive.”

Staid regarded them a long moment. They said, “I’m glad.” Then, “I love you.”

Staid was the type to show their care through actions, through support and lessons and food; while their love for their children was always evident, sometimes smotheringly so, a spoken statement like that was exceedingly rare. Feist was unable to speak, and only nodded. Happy, still lanced with anxiety and resentment over Feist’s condemnation of him, felt a wave of searing jealously that was only tangentially related to Staid’s words of love. He masked his feelings and turned to Napstablook. “Napster! City life must have treated you well; you look fantastic. I’ve been overcome with curiosity since you’ve been gone: did you get the recordings you wanted?”

Napstablook gave a bounce of excitement in the air. “So many songs! All different kinds. Fleet took me all around the city and I met ghosts working, and ghosts playing, and ghosts being nice, and ghosts being naughty, and ghosts being lazy, and…”

“We met other ghosts,” Feist interjected. “Three of them living in a house together, they let us stay with them. One of them was family! Half-family. Viyoo lineage. They want to meet you!”

Happy knew he should have felt excited to hear that. He would have felt excited; but Feist was speaking directly to Staid, a singular “you.” At that moment, more family sounded like more people to appease and more chances to be left on the outside.

Staid lifted their head with surprise and said nothing. Their mouth smiled, but their eyes wavered. Then they said, “The deliveries? How did that go?”

“Swimmingly,” said Napstablook, trying the word out, feeling their way around each syllable.

“Swimmingly!” Happy repeated the word with enthusiasm. Napstablook looked at him and giggled. Happy looked past them to Staid, triumphantly, a little bit manic. His eyes avoided Feist.

Staid made their first genuine smile in days, bestowing it on each of their children in turn; but there was still a hollowness around their eyes, and a faintness to their words. “You take care good of yourselves, and you take good care of each other, and you take good care of the farm. I’m so proud of all of you.”

And Staid paused. “I have to ask… I’m sorry, I need to know… how…. how is Toriel?”

The smiles dropped from Feist and Napstablook’s faces. Tears welled in Napstablook’s eyes. Feist spoke. “She… she… she disappeared. Nobody knows where she is.”

Staid’s eyes went empty. They made an “oh,” a sigh without sound.

Happy flashed back to times in the Dreemurr houses, to the warmth of the queen mother’s words and hands and cooking. He remembered her affirmation; maybe she hadn’t affirmed him as “him” after all, now he would never know, but without a doubt she had affirmed his ability to provide hope. Even that was lost now.

“I think I… need to lay down a bit…” Staid said, and their voice was faint, as if coming from a great distance. The three Blook children watched after them as they turned and drifted stiffly back to the houses.

 

* * * * *

Working in the field in a corporeal body was, and wasn’t, what Feist had expected. The satisfying weight of the tools was there. There was the solidness of foot against dirt, packing it into novel patterns where before ghostly forms had only brushed it lightly. The strength and endurance of the physical body exceeded expectations. But the brisk invigorating feeling of cool wetness turned almost immediately into clamminess and grittiness. The dirt and slime, exhaustingly, had to be brushed off bit by bit, and using more water. And there was a new sensation, something horrible in the space between numbness and pain: itch. So physical irritation multiplied Feist’s emotional irritation, even before Happy approached the pens.

“Feist,” Happy hissed, just outside the edge of vision.

Feist refused to look at him, extending a day of chilly silence into a two-day streak, and talked to the ground. “This place is a total wreck. This all should have been done two weeks ago. But why should I be surprised? _Nobody_ was here helping Staid with the work.”

“Feist. _Please_.” Happy’s voice whined, high and choked. Happy was begging. Happy never begged. Feist felt a cold shock.

“Staid is…”

Feist looked up and met Happy’s eyes. Together they raced back to the blue house. Happy phased through the wall; Feist fumbled at the knob, which had always been there but was completely unfamiliar, until Happy pushed the door open from the inside.

A beam of dust-laden light entered the room, crossing from the door to where Staid was lying on their side, sunk into the corner where wall met floor. Their color was faint. Their eye stared, glassy. Napstablook was settled on the floorboards beside them, holding a ghost sandwich.

Feist didn’t hesitate, but crossed the room and lifted Staid’s head. “Staid. Staid! STAID!” Staid lay limply. Feist balanced them on the wooden foot a moment more and then gently laid them back down on the floor.

Napstablook offered the ghost sandwich. “… it’s good… don’t you want to try it?” Staid didn’t respond. Napstablook fidgeted. “… yeah… eating can be pretty boring…” They bit into the sandwich. “Hey… this sandwich is actually kind of fun…” They held the sandwich close to Staid’s mouth. “… now you eat some.” No response. Napstablook forced themself to take another bite. Tears spilled down their sides. “… I’m having a good time…” They took another bite. Swallowed. “… oh… look at that. I ate half already. The other half is for you. I’ll leave it right here, and you can eat it when you feel like it… okay…?” No response.

Napstablook lay on their back beside them. “Now that we’ve eaten we do the tradition that reminds us to feel thankful…”

Staid spoke. “You mean the tradition that reminds me my parent thought I was garbage?”

Staid’s voice was thin, but in the quietness it carried through the house. The three young ghosts blanched. Napstablook twisted to look into Staid’s face, their breath shuddering. Staid’s eye stared into the middle-distance. They didn’t say more.

Napstablook nestled close to them, curled around their still form, murmuring inaudible words into their side. Happy and Feist retreated back out into the yard, closing the door behind and drifting aimlessly across the yard.

“… It’s going to be okay,” Happy managed, his voice weak and delirious.

Feist headbutted him. “Airhead! Fool! Wake up! It’s not going to be okay. They’re falling down.” The words were said.

Happy’s eyes drifted up Feist’s dummy body, dragging over the solid surface, exhaustion contorting his face into a sneer. “They weren’t before. Not until _you_ came back.”

The words had exactly the effect Happy intended and wanted. Feist slammed into him, pushed him against the ground. Feist’s solid body landed with weight, stiches creaking and wood warping impossibly at the will of the soul it contained, trying to pound Happy into the dirt. But Happy’s ectoplasmic form slid around Feist’s solid body, impossible to grasp and impossible to harm, compressing cushion-like and bouncing harmlessly back into shape, slipping away easily and confounding Happy’s desire to take the blows.

There was no magic volley, no barrage of miniature ghost forms. _You’re holding back, asshole_ , Happy thought. _Don’t._ Thin tears leaked from his eyes.

Feisttablook yelped and staggered back. The grime still coating the dummy’s front showed marks, dark-wet streaks that dried quickly to a shade lighter than the original canvas. Feist wobbled on the monopodial stand, regained balance, then grimaced and flopped over to lie in the yard next to Happy.

Feist spoke, mouth just barely above the level of the mud. “Is it really my fault?”

“No,” Happy replied, in a whisper. “They’d been falling for days.” He thought of Staid standing over the neglected snail pens, their form visibly empty. “They lost hope before you got home.” He pressed his cheek against the dirt. “They started falling as soon as we got the news. I’ve been trying to help them. I can’t.”

Feist didn’t respond. For a moment Happy thought it was the return of silent treatment, punishment for his failure to save Staid, but when he lifted his head to look, Napstablook was hovering in the yard.

“They’re sad because they’re sad,” Napstablook said. “And they miss Toriel.”

After a moment to realize what Napstablook’s words meant, Happy and Feist rolled themselves off of the ground and bundled back into the house.

Staid was still lying on their side, but their eye focused on their children as they entered. They breathed, “I’m sorry. For what I said. I don’t want you to hurt because of me.” They took a long, deep breath, and it fortified them. Their voice was weak, but finally held some emotion. “Everybody said that my parent went mad with grief. That they didn’t know what they were doing anymore, and that’s why they… that’s why they died. But they were with me in the hospital. They took me up to the roof one night and showed me the stars in the sky. They taught me how to make stars under the roof. I don’t know… how someone who felt so kind and good… could have been mad.” A nearly-inaudible whisper. “…I don’t know how they could see me and then leave anyway.” They put their arms up against their face and shuddered.

The young Blooks waited.

Staid resumed. “I was still in the hospital when Val went… was gone. The doctors and nurses had lots of patients, patients with bodies, and they knew how to treat bodies. Ghosts came to bring ghost food, but they didn’t stay. I don’t blame them. So many ghosts had fallen already. I was half-fallen when I was born. If they stayed with me they might have fallen too. No matter how much healing magic the doctors used, I couldn’t stay healed.” Staid’s voice got stronger. “And then Toriel came to visit. When she saw me she said, “Who is taking care of this child?” And she picked me up and held me. She carried me the whole time she was in the hospital. Then I healed. I could heal because I felt how much someone cared. Toriel is the reason I’m alive.”

“Have you told her that?” Feist burst out.

Staid opened their mouth. Closed it. “… She must know.” Then, quietly, “… no.”

“Then you need to find her and tell her!” Feist gently nudged Staid upright. “And if you find Toriel and bring her back, you’ll bring hope to the whole Underground! This is what you need to do! You can’t give up before you’ve even started!”

Happy chimed in. “You can go anywhere in the whole Underground. No wall, no river, no crevice can stop you. And you’re guided by pure love. You’re perfect for this quest: only you can do it!”

Staid gave a small nod, color returning to their face. Napstablook wordlessly held out the remaining half of the ghost sandwich. Staid took a small bite. “Oof. It’s good, Napstablook, but it’s a little too rich for me. But… I could manage a crabapple…”

In a few hours the Blook children had packed a satchel with food and supplies. Staid donned the satchel, still lower in the air than they would have been a month prior but now with a healthy verdant color. They kissed the heads of each of their children in turn, and spoke a parting blessing.

“Happstablook. My joyful child that brings joy. Be true to yourself, and take care of our family just as you have been doing.” Happy’s face projected affirmation and gratitude as he received the charge. Nobody would have known by looking at him that he knew it was impossible to fulfill both parts.

“Feisttablook. My strong child that protects. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to all of us. You’re a good ghost.” Feist nodded forcefully.

“Napstablook. My kind child. Keep making your music. Celebrate ghost culture and keep our family’s good memories alive.” Napstablook smiled and blushed foam-white.

Even after Staid had disappeared around the tunnel corner the three young Blooks stood, watching.

Happstablook broke the silence. “You saved them, Feist and Napster. You brought back their hope when I couldn’t help them at all.” He stopped. He had intended to say words of praise, or at least make some sort of overture of reconciliation to Feist, but the words that had come out were pure self-pity — and honestly, he was too emotionally weary to know how to fix the words, or to care. Napstablook’s eyes shone sympathetically.

Feist blinked at the ground. “You really are a fool.” The tone didn’t match the words, or the interactions between the ghost siblings for the past two days; it was gentle and affectionate. “Do you think I couldn’t tell? You gave so much of yourself to Staid that you half killed yourself. If it wasn’t for you, they would have fallen for sure. They probably would have been gone before we even got back from the City.” A pause. The mother-of-pearl buttons side-eyed Happy. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not wrong about humans. …And it doesn’t mean you’re not an asshole.”

Happy snorted. “You know when you call me that you’re really saying it about yourself.”

Feist’s eyes went back to the path. “Yeah.”

The three siblings turned back to the fields and the houses. Now Blook Acres was their responsibility.


	7. Grounded

Weeks went by and there was no war. Grillby returned to his bar; Gerson returned to his orchard. The juvenile dogs returned to Snowdin and commenced scrapping the same way they always had, but with improvised military honorifics. The River carried down a yellow scum of pollen that folded into gritty layers around the trash in the dump. Spring had come.

In the absence of immediate threat the atmosphere of dread over Blook Acres dissipated. Snails were coming out of hibernation, and there was work to be done. The three remaining Blooks threw themselves into it.

Feist’s corporeal body could work with more efficiency and stamina than an ectoplasmic form, and so, with some additional effort from the other two Blooks, Staid’s physical role on the farm was neatly filled. Their de facto position as foreman was more difficult to replicate. Feisttablook and Happstablook squabbled frequently over small details of when and how to complete tasks; Napstablook kept out of the discussions and slogged on. The snails grew fat under the farms’ fluorescent lights. The Blooks worked long, hard days, taking comfort in the routine.

The snails grew (even more) sluggish in the heat and humidity of summer. The Blooks adjusted their schedules, spending less time supplying fresh vegetables and more time ferreting out the eggs the snails had hidden under rocks and topsoil, caching them for next year’s crop. The older dogs returned from New Home City, prancing and showing off their shiny new weapons and armor.

The heat and humidity peaked and faded. The snails were finally slaughtered, packed into buckets and tins, and loaded for delivery to New Home City. Feist pulled the cart, knowing the trip would take longer than in past years but proud that Blook Acres could now operate independently of contractors. Napstablook rode on the cart, their audio recorder adding a negligible amount of weight and their form none at all, smiling in anticipation of visiting Ghost Town again.

Happstablook sent them off with cheers and a shower of well-wishes, and when he was sure they had gone, really certain they were well on their way and not turning around, he crept to Snowdin. Invisible, he drifted through the streets, observing; and when he found what he was looking for, he waited until the shopkeepers had closed out their workdays and left their wares. He snuck into a shop. Feisttablook’s cloth face and button eyes dominated his thoughts: _they really do feel better with a corporeal body, it shows._

He found a dressing dummy. Looked it over with a critical eye. It wasn’t as sturdy as Feist’s, it was short, the face was ugly, the material was cheap… What if corporeality felt so good that he fused, and then he was stuck with it forever? … But what if it felt like nothing at all? His soul ached. He took several deep breaths and sternly contradicted his racing worries. As long as he kept his emotions under control he would be in no danger of fusing. _This is… just a quick pop into the dressing room. Trying on a new style… no big deal. Really. No big deal at all._ He held his breath and possessed the dummy.

He could feel the floor! The base pressed against it, an anchor and a guide of direction. The body’s cloth boundaries held his soul like a hug. Focus, stability and self-assurance washed through him. He took a hop in the body, and then another, and walked it across the room, laughing.

Something wasn’t right. Discomfort grew the longer he wore the body, going from unimportant to insistent in minutes. It was like a corporeal person would feel wearing shoes two sizes too small. When he walked it over to a mirror and looked in he saw someone unrecognizable. It was like a grotesque parody, a person who imitated his every move without mistake but bore no relation to him. He teetered, dizzy. The pressure of the base against the floor gave him the physical sense of direction and solidity he had been missing, but his soul was still disoriented, sideways and misfit from whatever existence this body could provide. He walked the body back to its original spot, arranged it exactly as he had found it, and abandoned it.

A chair with cheerfully-colored upholstery caught his eye. He possessed it. It wasn’t any better. It was worse: it felt like being wrapped inside a carpet, rough and woolen and itchy, able to walk but with arms pinned. He shot out through the wall and sought another store, pricked with guilt for trespassing again but driven by desperation to know. It had to be that damn monopodial base on the dummy that had caused the problem, and then that stupid chair had four legs but it didn’t even have a proper head… if he found a body with limbs he wouldn’t feel wrong anymore. So he sought out a toy store, and the dolls were all so small they pinched his soul, but the pinching was okay, this was just a test and he could find a bigger body later but he had to know… And each one gave him the same initial rush relief, but the disorientation crept back inexorably, just as with the dummy.

He abandoned Snowdin. He threw off solidity in favor of speed: without thought-dictated mass his ectoplasmic form moved through the air without disturbing a molecule. Beds of blue-phosphorescent echo flowers loomed in front and passed under him and fell behind, undisturbed. His pale form didn’t even cast a shadow.

He halted himself and wheeled around, back to the echo flowers. A plant! Plants were beautiful, plants were full of life but had vacancy for a soul, plants were rooted into the ground instead of just resting on it… _Some plants even come in male and female_ … These plants even had a voice! He entered a flower. It was intoxicating: the feeling of sap moving through phloem, surface tension pulling water from the earth up into his body, comfortable warmth emanating from decaying matter in the ground, and the faint light in the cave attracting his attention as strongly as the flickering television ever had. But intoxicating was an apt word; after several minutes his thoughts wandered aimlessly, the rootedness of the body felt like weight that made him lethargic, and his emotions became dissipated. He tried making a sound, laughing up at the crystal-studded ceiling. Even the plant’s thin body gave his voice more depth and resonance than he had as a ghost, and hearing the new voice gave him satisfaction. But the other echo flowers picked up the sound, spreading it across the cavern in swelling cacophony of voices: they were no creative collaborators, no live studio audience; just canned laughter, empty and fake.

He stormed back to Blook Acres, letting his mood manifest in a bow wave that scattered raindrops and shook reeds as he passed through. He entered the blue house, opening and slamming the door not because he had to but because he could, and screamed impotently at the walls.

He turned on the TV. His ectoplasmic arm was so short that he had to lean against the screen in order to press the button. He paused like that, the screen’s picture beaming against his forehead, dazzling his eyes.

Ghosts possessed bodies made of wood or fabric, not metal or plastic or glass. _Why not?_ Taboo. It just wasn’t done. _Why not?_ Those weren’t the right sort of bodies. _Why the hell not?_ The television had given him education and comfort and assistance. He sometimes felt like a television himself, when his face and voice broadcast what he knew those around him wanted and expected to see. Was it possible for him to literally _be_ a television?

On the surface there had been a strong taboo on possessing bodies that had once contained a soul; on inhabiting human or animal corpses. Happstablook’s parent’s parent had demonstrated the reason for that rule in the most terrible and gruesome way imaginable. Happy leaned his head against the TV’s upper edge to stave off a wave of nausea. The horror of the memory wasn’t enough to kill his curiosity. Was he about to do the same as they had?

He possessed the TV.

The electricity burst across his consciousness and fizzed inside him like a sour flavor, unexpected, but after a few seconds not unpleasant. The room in front of him was lit brightly, and when he managed to turn by rocking back and forth slightly, he found the wall behind him to be glowing with the same uniformity. Of course; the source of the light was also his eyes. Sound was emanating from his middle. He… clenched?... something?... in his interior, and the quality of the light and sound changed; he was changing channels. He had a voice, but he couldn’t control the words he spoke: it was OFF or ON, this channel or that, loud or soft, but he didn’t know what his voice would say until he spoke. The delight of the light-projecting eyes was overshadowed by the disconcerting disconnected voice. Beyond that, the box-shaped appliance felt much like the chair had. Happy exited and looked down at himself. His ectoplasm looked just as it had before; he felt just as he had before. The experiment had been entirely anticlimactic.

Happy flopped down in front of the TV, energy spent. It had been left on a channel playing the news: talking heads, endless repetition of the same old speculation over and over, rabbits in military formation in New Home City. It switched to images of human anti-monster propaganda that had washed down on the river, embroidered fabrics showing humans impaling dragons with lances, paintings of wolves with slavering jaws and piercing red eyes, graphic animation of a cyclops grappling with a giant ape. Then the Royal Scientist, his eyesockets full of promises to break the barrier and wage war against the humans. It was all useless, useless, useless.

Mercifully, the news and analysis came to an end, and one of the few monster-produced movies came on. Happy lay still, exhausted, and buried his thoughts under its predictable plot and cloying sentimentality.

* * * * *

Feist was shaking him awake. He blinked back towards consciousness, squinting at the aura cast around Feist’s solid head by the TV’s glare. Napstablook’s voice came from the surrounding darkness. “It’s a good thing we came back now… the fridge was sneaking up on you…”

Happy stretched, and slurred, “I got an Aaron to move it over here so I didn’t have to get up to get food.” He hadn’t. He had possessed it and walked it over, wincing at the coldness in its/his core. “You wish you’d been this productive.” His words were met with silence, and he jolted to full consciousness. He had only been lying around for a day, maybe two, right? What were they doing back?

He followed Napster and Feist outside the house. There was the delivery cart. It was still mostly-full.

“Everyone canceled their orders.” Feist kicked the cart wheel, wood thwocking wood. “Nobody’s eating snails anymore, not since Toriel left. Not the families, not the restaurants. It’s too depressing to even look at snails. Most of them paid us anyway… this one last time… just out of pity… damn it! Damn it! DAMN IT!”

Feist leaned against the cart’s side wheezing, and Napster picked up the story. “We went to Toriel’s house, but she still wasn’t there. The hairy man inside took a bunch of buckets of snails. He was kind of crying at them, though. Maybe he’s afraid of snails.”

Happy blinked rapidly to force himself to focus. He paced the yard, the edge of his ectoplasm rippling with nervousness. “Okay… we’ll find a way around this. We just have to… diversify!” He turned a forced enthusiastic smile on his siblings.

“Snail caviar blowout sale?” Feist muttered acidly against the cart.

Happy resumed pacing. “Well. Maybe. In part. There’s got to be other things snails are good for. We just have to be creative. We’ll figure something out.”

“… snail band? I bet they’d be good at playing theramin…” Napstablook ventured. Their siblings ignored them.

Feist turned one pearl-sheen eye towards Happy, looked about to say something, and stopped. Turned towards the cart again. “Yeah? And for now, what about all this snail meat?” Happy looked at the loaded cart, silent, biting his lip. Feist supplied the answer. “We’re going to have to eat it.”

 _Eat it_ didn’t just mean the production costs, it meant the meat itself. They’d have to age it until it was ripe for ghost food. Feist frowned. The smell of rotting meat would drift over into the Aarons’ gym; that meant complaints pseudo-softened by a creepy smile. Happy frowned. It would aggravate the local Woshua; that meant scolding, and constant vigilance to keep them from cleaning it up. Napster frowned. It would attract dogs who would hang around to enjoy the smell; that meant small talk.

Happy’s arms emerged pressed together in a supplicating gesture, his mind already racing ahead. “Let me go to the City and try talking to our customers. A lot of them placed orders just last season after my advertising, right? I’ll just have to impress them all over again. And for our faithful customers from the year before, I’ll remind them of our business relationship and the quality we provided — those good old memories have to outweigh the new bad memories, right?”

Even though Happy’s energy was brittle, it was still encouraging. Feist perked up. “You think anyone in Snowdin would be interested in the meat? Sure it never really caught on before, but what if we offered a discount? I could take some tins over while you’re in New Home.”

“Looking like that?” Happy asked.

Feist bristled, mouth drawing down at the corners, wounded.

Happy’s brow wrinkled. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he said, placating. “Look. A bunch of dogs just got back from military training in the Capitol. Dogs are creatures of habit. What have they been attacking for months?” He looked pointedly at Feist’s dummy body. Feist tried to glower but looked queasy instead. “I’ll be two days, promise. Then we’ll all go together.”

Feist hesitated, begrudging, then nodded.

* * * * *

Happy filled a satchel with tins of snails and, flying low under their weight, disappeared down the tunnel toward New Home. Feist and Napster packed the fridge full of as many buckets of snails as could fit and settled in to wait.

A day went by. The small first-year snails slept and nibbled on food Feist supplied. The emptied pens sat neglected, sloppy — there was no point in preparing them for next year if there was going to be no next year’s harvest. Napster reviewed their music library, losing themself in the sounds. Feist patrolled the boundaries of the farm, looking up sharply at every real or imagined sound.

Another day went by. Napster recorded surreptitiously as Feist’s dummy’s base beat a dull staccato on the dirt yard around the house. They hid the recorder behind their back when Feist turned sharply and approached them.

“Waiting is the worst. I’m going to Snowdin.”

“…Happy said you’ll get nommed on if you go into town.”

“Happy said my body would be a target. And yeah, I hate to say it, they’re probably right; but… But…. But,” Feist paused, glaring at the ground, then took a long, steadying breath. “Everyone in Snowdin knows us, right? So Staid and Happy used to do most of the business; but they’ve seen all of us Blooks plenty of times, they’re used to us. That can’t have changed any, right? Right? RIGHT?” Napster didn’t answer, only tilted their head.

Feist entered the pink house, hopped to the far wall, and lay down carefully. Yellow ectoplasm leaked from the prone cotton body, taking shape over it, cradling it for a long moment. Feist straightened, turned to Napster, and spoke in a rough voice. “I look just like I always did before, right? No problem.”

Napster trailed Feist outside. “… are you sure?” Feist didn’t hear them, preoccupied. “… can I come with you?” Napster ventured.

Feist rummaged for a second satchel and filled it with tins; then on further thought, scrounged up a small cardboard box and loaded it with live snails. “You should hold down the farm. Happy might be back today, there should be someone waiting here for them.”

Napster wavered and didn’t answer. They watched as Feist disappeared down the tunnel towards Snowdin.

* * * * *

Feist emerged from the thick fog bordering the barrier-ward side of Snowdin, hurrying, trying to outpace the feeling of being exposed, and made a beeline for the bakery. Currently it was run by the niece of the rabbit whose frippery Feist had trashed about a decade before. Feist had made up for that episode, under Staid’s direction, with service to the rabbit family and with spades of politeness; it was in the past.

Beside the building a pack of near-adolescent puppies rested, panting and chatting and tussling off and on. Seeing them raised Happy’s words to Feist’s mind, and a graphic image of sharp white teeth shredding canvas and cotton; Feist passed by, trying to look calm. One of the dogs sounded a high-pitched howl. Feist flinched and jerked around; but the dogs looked to be intent on their own conversation. Young dogs played at being big dogs all the time. It didn’t mean anything.

The rabbit watched Feist shoulder open the heavy wooden door with effort. Her welcoming smile was a half-second delayed. “How can I help you?”

Feist put the cardboard box on the floor — it wouldn’t do to sully the spotless counter with something that had been close to the dirt — opened it and held up a snail. “We’ve had a bumper crop of snails at Blook Acres.” _Does she hear that nervous quaver in my voice as much as I do?_ Feist forced down the thought and spoke more loudly. “We’ve embraced new technology, and the snails are growing happy and healthy…”

The rabbit smiled and listened to the spiel. When it ended with, “… and we’re offering a special low rate to new customers,” the corners of her eyes crinkled sympathetically.

“I’d love to be one of your customers, but rabbits don’t eat snails.”

“I know that,” said Feist, a little more testy than intended, “but to sell in your shop… We offer a recipe book.” They didn’t; but they could, surely Happy could make short work of gathering recipes.

“I’m sorry, but snail-based food just isn’t selling. Because of…” her face fell; she was genuinely sorry. “… you know.”

Feist deflated, looked at the ground.

“Tell you what, though. We’ve been developing a new cream-filled pastry, and phasing out the egg custard. We’ll probably have some leftovers tomorrow. If you come back, you can take them… my treat, on the house.”

Feist’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t come here for charity.” That… wasn’t intended, and Feist regretted saying it immediately. But the worst part was the rabbit’s reaction. She didn’t frown, she didn’t set her jaw in disapproval, she didn’t react in the way of someone affronted by rude words. Her ears drew backwards, her eyes widened; just for a second, before her smile returned. She was hiding it admirably, but she was afraid.

Feist lowered the snail back into the box and folded the top with swift, jerking movements. “I’m Sorry… I’m sorry… i’m sorry.” The rabbit’s face smiled blandly. “Have… have… have a nice day,” Feist stammered, and made a quick exit.

Back out on the street, Feist’s eyes swept the row of buildings… there must be somewhere else to try. Maybe the bears? They ate snails, and they were… not as easily spooked by rumors, gossip and stories as rabbits. Feist concentrated on the task at hand with ferocious intensity. Maybe if there really was a recipe book, that would be the thing to offer, instead of leading with the slimy wares?

Behind Feist’s back, one of the young dogs sounded another howl. Another repeated it, but modified. This howl quavered, dipped and rose in tone, folded into waves. It was a crude imitation of a traditional ghost song. The pack of dogs barked their laughter.

Feist’s ectoplasm boiled like Toriel’s kettle, anger heating everything from the inside-out, yellow turning saturated and jaundiced. _The dogs should not be allowed to do that. The dogs should be stopped and taught a lesson._ But the thought of sharp teeth tearing cotton stitching flashed, the image overwhelming.

Feist fled.

 

* * * * *

A thin, blood-chilling cry floated through the still air into Gerson’s house. He rocked himself back and forth to build enough momentum to leave his armchair, trundled to the door, and poked out his head. “Hallo, kiddo. Good to see ya. Y’know, I got a doorbell, right here. You might try ringing it, you don’ have t’holler.”

Napstablook wrung their arms and looked at the ground.

“Whass’ on your mind?”

Napstablook lifted their head to look into Gerson’s face, tears beading in the corners of their eyes. “Feist went to Snowdin. Hours ago. They should have been back by now.” Napstablook paused, searching for the word that expressed how they felt, squinting as if it might be printed on the wall over Gerson’s head. “...I’m scared.”

Gerson patted Napstablook on the back. “So Feist lost track of time, sounds like? ‘Sure they’re fine, don’t worry. That’s just a lil’ thoughtless though, in’t’it? Let’s go find ‘em together.” He retreated into his house and emerged a few minutes later carrying a lantern. The elderly tortoise and young ghost set out side-by-side.

The sodden low soil of Waterfall gave way to squelching marsh festooned with lilypads and water sausages; Gerson’s heavy footfalls were resonant against the wooden boardwalks traversing the muck. Bioluminescent motes floated through the air, reflected in the black waters. The tunnels narrowed, claustrophobically dark, and opened again. The ceiling was lost in thick, dripping white cloud. Gerson bypassed a box of communal umbrellas, impervious to the rain with his pith helmet shielding his eye; his khakis dampened and clung to his thick, scaly skin.

Huge eyes loomed out of the dark, suddenly mere feet from Gerson’s lantern, and he stumbled back a step. It was Feist, hovering in the center of the path; still, eyes unfocused. The cardboard box had gone soggy in the damp and opened; the satchel was crisscrossed with shimmering trails and snails oozed across Feist’s forehead and cheeks.

Gerson whistled through his teeth. He spoke softly. “Hey there, kiddo. We been lookin’ for ya.”

Feist didn’t respond.

Napstablook looked to Gerson with a whimper. He patted their back. “Hush now, they’re okay. It’s just like Staid use’t’do sometimes. Apples and trees fallin’ and such. Gimme a moment.” Gerson set his lantern on a tuft of grass beside the path and approached Feist, reaching up to rub the ectoplasmic surface as one would massage the fingers of a person in shock. The ectoplasmic form, rigid, moved backwards slightly in the air under the gentle force of his fingers. “There now, Feisty,” he coaxed, “Your friends are here. Come and talk to us, yeah?”

Feist shuddered. The snails slid, slipping as their mucus trails phased through Feist’s surface and were caught by gravity, and they fell to the ground. With a shaky intake of breath, Feist’s eyes focused on Gerson’s.

Gerson smiled, tilted his head warmly, and continued rubbing Feist’s side, which now offered resistance to the pressure as a conscious body should. “You’re all right. But you gave your cousin here a right fright, wandering out here in the rain like this. You gotta learn to take care of yerself when this happens, jus’ like Staid use’ta. If you feel yerself start to go away, find something pretty to look at. Focus on it. Keep yerself grounded.”

Something in the depths of Feist’s eyes cleared. Feist broke away from Gerson’s touch and bolted around the perimeter of the small cavern in a flash, phasing through the raindrops without disturbing a drop, shooting directly through curtains of reeds, and coming to a jarring stop inches from Gerson’s wide surprised eye.

“Grounded? To what?” Feist spat, and disappeared away down the tunnel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter is almost finished... and it'll be a light one, promise. :)


	8. Three Chords

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't telling a lie last month when I said that I was almost done with the next chapter... But what I didn't anticipate is that my beta-reader, River, would read it and say, "You can't switch gears so dramatically with just one summary-paragraph; you need to write an entirely new chapter to go before this one." And so this month is another two-fer.
> 
> Thank you for your patience! I feel so happy seeing the hit-count go up between chapters -- thank you for reading!

Napstablook made the trip from the rainy places back to Gerson’s House carefully matching the elderly tortoise’s pace; they would hate to make him feel that he was slow, or to let on that they were intentionally going more slowly than they were able. Gerson was speaking. His tone was pleasant and that was a comfort; but the words’ meanings passed straight through Napstablook like the raindrops that phased straight through their ectoplasm to plop onto the path below. At Gerson’s doorstep, he gave them one last gentle pat and a confident gap-toothed smile; that made Napstablook feel a little better. He went inside and closed the door and Napstablook was alone again.

Napstablook made the trip from Gerson’s House to Blook Acres slowly, caught between emotions like a speck of iron between opposing magnets. They wanted to see if Feist was all right. They were afraid they’d see Feist wasn’t all right.

They knew where Feist would be, and phased through the wall of the pink house and switched on the indoor light. The dummy body made a little cringe as the light came on; it was animate again, making near-imperceptible shifts with Feist’s breaths. Feist was facing the wall, but turned after a moment’s pause, hopping with light quick steps to press cheek to cheek in a ghost hug.

“I’m SORRY. I’m sorry. i’m sorry.”

Napster wasn’t sure how to respond. Manners dictated they should accept an apology with graciousness, but wouldn’t doing so be agreeing that Feist had done something bad? Wouldn’t that make Feist feel worse, not better? If Feist felt worse, then they would feel worse. And if they felt worse, and Feist felt worse, and Happy wasn’t back yet, and Staid was still somewhere far away, that would be awful.

They didn’t know where to start in unraveling whatever had upset Feist, and the thought of trying intimidated them. They gave up and addressed their own confusion instead. “What happened in Snowdin?” Their hushed voice sounded disproportionately loud in the quiet room.

Feist was silent for several long moments, and answered the unasked question instead. “…I’m just frustrated… I’m disappointed… I’m upset… because… I thought I would be fully corporeal by now.”

Napstablook didn’t understand why Feist loved wearing a heavy and rough body, and they didn’t understand why being attached to it permanently, being weighted down and vulnerable, would have any appeal, but they knew that many ghosts felt that way. They saw Feist was miserable without it. They didn’t speak, but extended an arm and held it against the fabric side to show that they heard and acknowledged.

Feist accepted Napstablook’s touch with a weak smile, but still felt compelled to speak to fill the silence. “Staid told me to protect the family. And that’s what I’m gonna do. Don’t worry. that… That… That’s NOT going to happen again.”

Feist’s voice broadcast strength, but Napstablook heard the tone of brittleness underneath it. Their soul hurt in empathy, and with uneasiness of their own. It was normal for Napstablook to have trouble grasping the right words to put to thoughts and emotions, and Staid was that way too, to a degree. But both of their siblings were always so ready with perfect and complicated words, and yet both of them had struggled, were struggling, with something they couldn’t express. For Feist or Happy to be at a loss for words was weird and frightening.

Napstablook floated away and sideways a couple inches so they could look into Feist’s eyes on a level. “… it’s okay. If something is bothering you… at any time you can… say something… and Happstablook too… it feel like there’s… I don’t know…” They wanted to express support, acceptance, encouragement, but somehow the words to express those emotions played at the same time inside their mind like the cacophony of an orchestra tuning up and it was hard to pick out one thought to start. They focused on a single note and tried again. “…I just want you to be happy.”

A voice from the wall. “Bitch that’s my job.”

Feist and Napster jumped in surprise. Feist settled, and frowned at the jarring interruption. Napster gave a laugh of relief like a small chime.

Happy completed phasing through the wall, chattering airily. “I’m sorry, you two were having such a tender moment, it was just beautiful. But I just couldn’t wait any longer to share my news, I’m rude sometimes, I know, I can’t help myself, begging your forgiveness.”

Napstablook squinted at him; that was a LOT of words of words all of a sudden, even for Happy. How long had they been there, listening?

Feist grimaced, rocking the dummy body backwards on its stand. “Ugh, did you have to mention dogs though?”

“Why, what about dogs?” Happy took in Feist’s perfectly intact body and wrecked expression. “You went to Snowdin, didn’t you?” He screwed his mouth to the side. “Nevermind, don’t say more. I think I can guess.” His expression shifted from sympathetic to excited in an instant. “Hey! But you all have to hear my news! Ready for it… I got rid of those snails!”

Napstablook skimmed past the unspoken meaning, caught up past the sudden change in tone and subject, and broke into a smile of anticipation and admiration. Feist nodded grimly, with a sarcastic half-smile. “You threw them off the waterfall.”

“No, I sold them! Well, some I gave to customers who had already paid you. But come outside and check it out!”

Napster and Feist followed Happy outside, the former phasing and the latter using the door. The knapsack was sitting on a dry tussock of weeds, open. Inside was a long scrap of white paper and a glint of gold.

“What did you _do_?” Feist demanded.

“It’s what _you_ did, Feist. You had a good idea! Turns out there are customers who are turned off snails, for now, maybe for good, whatever, but they’re willing to try the new delicacy… snail caviar! We just have to deliver. Customer numbers aren’t too high… yet… but think how easy it’ll be to transport!” He picked a piece of gold out of the knapsack. “And sure, nobody’s serving snail meat to their guests, but there’s a few people who are glad to have a little private stash and not quit cold. That’s how I unloaded the meat that I took.”

Napstablook nodded along, listening with pride. Of course Happstablook would have found a way to fix things. Feist’s expression vacillated between joy and skepticism and finally landed on something like exasperation. “But Napster and me… talked to… when we were doing the deliveries… How did you convince them?”

“I have my own personal kind of magic. Don’t you know?” Happy winked, remembered Feist disliked winks, and turned the gesture into a sequential blink. “So. Small-time under-the-table snail meat worked, as far as that goes, and caviar worked as far as _that_ goes… who’s to say what else is going to work? Didn’t I say we should diversify?”

Happy swooped to Feist’s side, giving a friendly bump and putting one arm out to hold the cotton side. “Maybe there’s even some sort of market in Snowdin after all. We’ll all go and see. Whatever they said to you before, just forget it. Who’s going to bother us when the three of us are together? Let them try.” He flicked his ectoplasmic skirts in a gesture of defiance. Feist’s face was still tilted in a dubious expression, but managed a small smile.

Napstablook hovered to Happy’s other side and joined in the hug. A three-ghost family. Like a three-chord song; it was simple and inelegant, but it worked fine.


	9. Home Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the second of two chapters posted today.

Happy and Feist were in a huddle beside the snail pens at the far end of the yard. Feist’s wooden foot was splashed with drying mud almost up to the cotton, from pacing the seasonally-soggy paths of the farm. Happy had scratched out a short track into the mud, at one end “GO” and the other “WIN!!!” Four of the most brightly-colored snails loitered at the “GO” end.

“I call it… Thundersnail!” Happy put up his arms for emphasis and waited for praise.

Feist’s cotton face formed a frown of distaste. Over the course of the year the canvas had gotten more and more pliable, adjusting to the individuality and emotions of the ghost who inhabited it. “Gambling? Ugh. That’s trashy.”

 _How unsurprising that they would use their exceptional ectoplasmic abilities to make eyebrows solely for the purpose of looking scornful._ Happy put his arms away and raised his own brow, aloof. “As if. It’s fun! And it plays to our strengths. Do you honestly think the public is going to buy skin-care products from people without skin?”

Before Feist could answer Napstablook was between them, smiling and wide-eyed, bouncing with anticipation.

“Oh, hey Napster.” Happy drew the words out. “Help us out with this. What do you think is a better money-making idea: the thrilling new game of chance, skill and verve: Thundersnail! Or, slime something something.” He waved his arm-nub in a dismissive circle.

The look of excitement slipped from Napster’s face. Their mouth opened slightly and their eyes squinted as they looked from Happy to Feist. They backed away slowly and drifted away.

Happy’s eyes followed them as they left, but Feist leaned in front of his eyesight, nabbing his attention again. “No, see See SEE, this is my thinking. You’ve noticed a lot of people in Snowdin have skin issues, right? The indoor air is dry and they get flaky and ashy, the snow and ice gives them chapped lips and ears, they get minor burns from being careless when they’re tending their fireplaces. Or no, you haven’t noticed, because you think corporeal people are the coolest but you don’t have the slightest idea of the problems that come with actually being corporeal.”

“Hey! That’s... uncalled-for.” _You had the right body handed to you. I tried so hard._

Feist continued, not reading anything unexpected in Happy’s expression. “So, one day I was thinking, bunch of assholes, I wouldn’t spit on them if they were on fire. And then I thought, what if I could? Spit on them. Like like LIKE not really spit obviously because this body doesn’t do that, but slime, snail slime. And not on fire, but like the minor burns, the chapping, the dryness. And they’d pay me for the privilege.”

Napstablook popped up between the two of them, expression open and querulous. They waited.

Feist ignored them, eyes fixed on Happy. Happy turned his eyes up towards the cavern ceiling and then looked at Napster, expression beginning to pucker with frustration. “Yes…?”

Napster looked back and forth between the two of them for a moment, their expression again sliding from anticipation to disappointment. They made an offended huff, and flew away again.

Happy took a moment to gather his thoughts looked back to Feist. “I certainly see the appeal of your idea as a revenge fantasy, I’m just not sure it’s a good business model. Do you even know…?”

Napster interrupted them again, their eyes shining wetly and their breath hitching in melodramatic gasps.

Happy sighed, drawing it out into a moan, pinkness blooming into an irritated fuschia. “Will you just TELL us what’s WRONG already, we don’t have TIME for guessing!”

Napster’s tears spilled as they looked downward, and they spoke in a muted whine. “… it’s like you don’t even care that I found Staid.”

Happy and Feist sprung up, yelped with joy. They leaped at Napstablook, almost knocking them backwards through the air. Their cries of excitement rolled into a shower of questions. “Where?” “When?” “How are they?”

Napster’s eyes opened wide; their tears halted and stood viscously at the corners. A smile dawned across their face. Then their smile faded, shone out again, then faded again, and their brow crinkled. “…didn’t I tell you?”

“No!” Happy and Feist shrieked in chorus, Happy resisting an urge to shake Napstablook as if it would make the words come out faster, Feist making a bounce of excitement which resulted in inadvertently getting freshly splashed with mud.

Napster looked at the ground, wearing a tiny smile of embarrassment. “… oh… I imagined I told you… but then I didn’t… I forgot…”

 

* * * * *

The wall at the border of the ruins of Home City loomed suddenly out of the forest of comb-tine-tight pine trees as the three ghosts approached. Napstablook pulled ahead and phased through the purple stone without hesitation. Happstablook stopped and looked at Feisttablook, who was slowing, wood skidding on the snow-slippery path, looking at the closed door with an expression of growing dismay. After a second Napstablook re-emerged. “… oh… I’m sorry. The door is locked. The only way in is to phase through.”

Feist lifted off the ground, inspecting the wall’s weather-stained, lichen-laced surface, looking upwards to where it went rough and uncut, then slippery and mineral-streaked, to high above where it merged with the dark distant cavern ceiling. “There’s got to be a hole or crack here somewhere, right?”

“We already looked, Staid and me,” said Napstablook. “There’s a gap between a couple of worn-down bricks way up on the left there. The spiders put a little curtain over it to keep the draft out. We tried to make it bigger. We sat up on the wall and cried on it for an hour; I had such a good time. But it’s not even big enough for a tin of snails yet.” Feist’s lip quivered. Napster said, “Maybe… I made a mistake…?” and floated up to help search the wall.

Happy made a decisive turn and disappeared into the thick of the trees that flanked the wall. There was a rustling sound. A few minutes later Happy called out, “Over here, Feist! I got you covered.”

Feist descended to the ground and squeezed between tree trunks, tripping over snow-encrusted peaks of needle-leaf litter, and emerged into a little space beyond; it was fragrant with conifer resin and freshly-disturbed loam. Happy gestured to a cleared space, just big enough for a training dummy to lie down, lined with dry needles and surrounded by fallen pine boughs. “Your body will be safe here until we get back.”

Feist gulped and hesitated, then ventured forward and lay down in the space. Happy watched the yellow ectoplasmic form emerge and take shape in the half-light. Feist drifted to the curtain of trees and cast a longing, leery look back at the vacated body.

Happy drew pine boughs down over it with tender care. And then, because he couldn’t resist, he affected a dry voice that creaked like tugged canvas. “Thank you, Happy! Gee, Feist, I’m so comfy here. How about you treat me this good all the time?”

Feist snorted. “Looks okay, I guess…” Then a reluctant smile. “Thank you.”

Happy leaned over the half-hidden body in a swoon, giving the “body”-voice a plaintive pitch. “Feeeist, I want silky pillows to sleep on. Feeeist, I want a nice shampooing. Feeeist, I want to go to the spa-aaaa!”

Feist manifested disapproving eyebrows again. “You’re pushing it.”

* * * * *

The three ghosts phased through the stone wall. The corridor beyond it was dark and close; they fell into single-file, their wide eyes straining. When they had visited Home as children this passage had been well-lit and frequented by travelers; its dark emptiness was eerie.

A brick arch marked the path towards the old Dreemurr house. As they filed through, Napstablook whispered, “Staid said they’d be out in the tunnels… we should be getting close.” Happy drew himself up and called down the corridor, “Yoooo-hoo!” His voice echoed back from the bare stone walls and floors; it was followed by silence. They continued travelling for a few minutes. Happstablook called out again. This time there was a distant response, in a slightly different timbre than Happy’s voice: Staid’s voice. The three ghost siblings hurried towards the source of the sound.

From up ahead came a faint “thwock.” Feist’s eyes widened. “No way.” Another thwock, and another, falling into a rhythm, approaching. Feist bolted ahead, voice rising into a squeal of excitement. “No Way! NO FRIGGIN’ WAY!”

On the path ahead was a training dummy. The cloth was age-worn, spotted by old mildew stains and new bleach treatments, but it was the same sturdy construction as Feist’s body. It had just one button eye, and that eye twinkled. It was Staid.

Feist rushed ahead and embraced the faded dummy. They stood, cheeks pressed together in greeting, until Happy and Napstablook caught up. Happy pressed his cheek to Staid’s in turn, and lingered, relieved. Staid’s spirit, expressed through the body, looked and felt strong, even if the body itself was a little worse-for-wear. When Happy drew back, Staid looked at Napster and said, simply, “Well done.” Napster beamed.

Feist gave Staid’s dummy body a cheeky look-over. “Good look for you.”

Staid ducked their head, making use of their new neck. “I can’t believe I was afraid for so long. Having a body is… nice.” They smiled at Feist, their brow furrowed with tender concern. “Are you still happy with your body? Where is it?”

Feist bounced in the air. “Yeah, Yeah, YEAH! It’s in good shape. Happy helped me hide it outside in the woods.”

“Good, good! I’m so sorry there isn’t a way to bring it through the wall. I wish I could open the door for you, but…” Staid paused. “It’s dangerous just now.” They perked up. “Some dummies were left behind in the city. They look a lot like yours, I think they were made by the same family! They’re quite a bit worse for wear now, you can see with this one… But just for temporary use. I mean, if you’d like… if it would let you be more comfortable when you visit… I hope you’ll come back and visit…”

“Of course. No doubt. Wouldn’t dream otherwise.” Feist touched cheeks with Staid again.

Staid looked at Happy. “And how are you?”

“In the pink,” he said, and winked.

“You have GOT to tell that one to Toriel,” Staid crowed, “she’ll be delighted!”

Staid drew back to look at all three siblings at once. “And how is Blook Acres? Napster has been shy to talk about it…” Napster ducked to stare at the purple tile beneath them. “No need to feel bad!” Staid comforted, “I know that sometimes it’s hard to find the words.”

Happy and Feist gave each other a long look.

“Not… so good… lately,” Happy ventured. “Sales are down, as snail meat has gone… somewhat out of fashion. BUT,” he charged ahead, “We have been brainstorming new ways to profit from our livestock.”

“Oh,” said Staid. After an uncomfortable beat they exclaimed, “Oh! I can help! Toriel has the perfect book! It’s called ‘72 uses for snails.’ Come back to the house, we’ll loan it to you! Or… you can read it in the house… and if you find parts you want to have with you at Blook Acres, I can copy them out for you.”

Staid headed the procession down the paths towards the Dreemurr house. They swiveled to look back at their children, sheepish. “I always meant to come back to visit you at Blook Acres, but one thing after another kept me here. I hope you weren’t worrying about me. Life here is good.” They paused, then chuckled. “Happy, I hope you won’t be disappointed: you sounded so excited about the grand quest I was undertaking; in the end it wasn’t epic at all. When I left the farm I remembered the good times we had with Toriel in the old Dreemurr house, so I came straight here, thinking I’d haunt it for a few days and gather my strength for the search… and here she was!” They paused as they clambered over a pile of stones that had fallen from the tunnel ceiling. When they spoke again their voice was subdued. “She was in mourning, so I didn’t want to leave her alone.” Several steps later their bright demeanor returned. “Then we were cleaning up the old house, putting it back the way it used to be, and that took a huge amount of time and effort. And then the child arrived…”

Feist sped up and pulled just in front of Staid, grinning and bouncing. “Child? Ghost child? New Blook?”

Staid turned their face away, wearing a smile. Only Happy noticed the shadow that crossed their face at the words. “Oh, no, not a ghost. And not a Boss monster either. … Although, I suppose it wouldn’t be. Boss monsters don’t work like that, do they?” Behind their back, Feist shot Happy a look of confusion. He returned the look with an ectoplasmic ripple of a shrug.

By this time they had entered the corridor that lay directly under the Dreemurr house. As they rose up over the stairs Staid called out, “Toriel! Are you up there? My family is visiting!”

Toriel’s voice filtered down from above. “What a pleasure! Do come in! We’re in the living room.”

With Staid taking the lead, followed by Happy then Feist then Napster, the ghosts reached the top story, rounded the bannister, and crossed the foyer to enter the living room. Toriel was sitting in her chair by the fire. When Happy saw what was in the chair with her, his soul gave a beat of shock that felt like it bruised the back of his eyes. A fraction of a second later Feist made a sharp intake of breath and released it with a hiss like a cornered animal, subconsciously floating back towards the stairs.

A human sat ensconced in Toriel’s lap. A little human, round-faced and chubby-armed, wearing a summertime dress and a too-big knitted sweater and a red ribbon-bow atop her baby-fine hair.

Toriel rose and set the human child’s feet on the floor, stooping to provide a steadying hand. Clasping one white-furred finger, the human toddled across the floor to the Blooks. She released Toriel’s finger and ran with uneven steps to Staid, falling against the cloth-and-cotton body and squeezing it tight. Staid nuzzled her head. “Everyone, this is Patience. Patience, dear-heart, these are my other children.”

Patience’s eyes lit upon the sunny yellow of Feist’s ectoplasm. Releasing Staid, she ran towards the bright cheerful color. Feist shrunk backwards, grimacing in horror, ectoplasmic surface shuddering under the brush of her fingers like the skin of a horse bit by horseflies.

“Feist!” Staid’s voice was quiet but saturated with warning. At the same time, Toriel scolded, “Patience!” Human and ghost looked over at the parental pair, Patience ducking and putting a finger to her mouth, Feist frowning in defiance.

“Patience, dearest,” said Toriel, holding up a stern finger, “Do you remember what I told you about meeting new monsters? Ask before you hug.”

Patience peeked through her eyelashes at Feist and spoke around her finger. “Hug?”

“No,” Feist answered flatly. Staid’s mouth tightened. Patience knit her tiny eyebrows in confusion.

“That’s all right,” Toriel soothed. “Sometimes people don’t want to be hugged. Maybe someone else would like a hug?”

Happy shot Feist a poisonous glare and drifted forward. “Me! I would like a hug.”

Patience approached, arms outstretched. She touched his ectoplasm — translucent, near-gelatinous, not like skin or fur — and brought her hand near her eyes, squinting, rubbing her fingers together. When her hand was not wet or cold or slimy, she leaned in and squeezed with both arms, laying her cheek against his side.

“Their name is Happy,” Staid said.

“Dere name is… Huggy!” Patience tittered into Happy’s side.

Happy blushed and sighed, eyes sparkling, and brought an arm to his mouth. “Oh my! She’s so unbelievably _cute_! Save me, I’m verklempt.”

Staid’s voice was warm. “Patience lost her way and arrived Underground not long ago. Toriel and I are raising her together.” Their voice remained gentle and steady as their eye bore into Feist’s eyes. “She’s innocent and kind. And now she’s family.” Feist gave a shiver and looked at the ground.

Napstablook drew forward to where Patience was still clinging to Happy, extended an arm and gingerly patted the ribbon; a shy smile appeared on their face. Happy bent and gave Patience a kiss on the top of her head. Feist hung back, eyes fixed downward.

Toriel smiled at the two ghosts embracing Patience. Then she put a hand to her mouth, eyes widening with polite concern. “Oh dear. Where are my manners? Shall we have tea?” She bustled away down the hallway to the kitchen.

With a ghost resident in Home there was no shortage of ghost food. Toriel brought out lemon scones and cucumber tea sandwiches for everyone. The cucumber was bitter — Toriel explained that the Froggits who remained living in Home City weren’t terribly attentive gardeners, and let their cucumber crops grow into massive whale-shaped gourds — but the scones were more delicious than ever.

After they had finished tea, Happy trailed Patience around the house, marveling showily at every toy, garment and bauble she showed off to him. Napstablook joined the two of them for an impromptu game of tag, but became overexcited and was so stuffed with cucumber sandwiches that they had to retreat to the kitchen to rest; they were found hours later asleep on top of the refrigerator. Toriel flitted about the house, radiating satisfaction at once again having her house full of guests and children.

Stavalblook and Feisttablook sat at the table and talked of bodies: unforeseen benefits and challenges, tips for care and comfort. Feist finally was able to tell Staid all about Blook cousin Remhalciyoo and their found family, about Ghost Town and the corporeal and periodically-embodied ghosts met in New Home City. The two of them did not talk about humans, or about Patience.


	10. Action!

The next few years saw a sharp and unavoidable decline for the farm at Blook Acres. A few of the 72 uses for snails panned out into something useable; the majority did not. The salve/moisturizer idea met a dead end of disinterest. The Thundersnail game caught a few curious marks, but after a round or two it always became apparent that it was unwinnable, and the novelty vanished. Still, through persistence, the young Blooks managed to patch together enough income to meet ghosts’ simple basic needs.

Despite the hardship, those years were a time of healing for the Blook family. When life on Blook Acres got too meager or monotonous or depressing, the young Blooks could visit Home for a good meal and a strong dose of nurturing. Napstablook’s confidence blossomed, in a quiet and private sort of way, since they had searched for and found Staid and reunited their family; they curated their tapes library with fresh dedication and dreamed up plans to find new sounds. Happy doted on Patience — a human who didn’t withdraw and stare, a human who would laugh and play with him! — and visited Home whenever he could manage it. Staid and Feist had struck an unspoken truce over the human child: Feist didn’t speak another word of negativity, and Staid didn’t push interaction with Patience. While that situation was uneasy, it was counterbalanced by a reason for closeness: now that they both inhabited bodies, Staid and Feist each had a new sense of identity and stability, and shared a ready topic of conversation.

* * * * *

Happstablook hovered by the side of the pink house, concentrating on keeping his ectoplasmic edge from rippling too quickly and betraying his nervousness. Up above, from the storage space just under the smooth bulging wall and hat-like roof, there was a scrape of wood against wood. The room had previously held bags of minerals for the snails — with plenty of room left over, in the hope and expectation that the Blook family industry would continue to grow. Since the snail farm had been downsized, Feist had claimed the space for … something? A collection, probably. It was ironic: self-effacing Napstablook delighted in sharing their collection, while forthcoming Feist was secretive about it.

A sigh breathed close by Happy, and his ectoplasmic surface gave a sharp twitch of surprise. Napstablook had approached — they had been visible, just unnoticed — to share their excitement in their understated way. “I’m glad you’re finally coming to Ghost Town. It’s so nice,” they intoned.

Happstablook wanted to tell them that he would stay behind after all, that he had to stay, that the farm needed someone in attendance constantly — that was clearly not true, but he could be convincing. He could buy more time, delay the meeting… the anticipation of it was dissolving his insides.

He was going to meet the ghost who worked in corporeal society, who inhabited masculine and feminine bodies. Feist and Napster’s description of Harkmello had been maddeningly open to interpretation, and had left Happy almost obsessively curious. He hardly dared to hope that they — she? he? — shared his secret. Or… maybe they weren’t like him, but… maybe they could listen, understand what he meant, accept it as easily as they had accepted Feist’s need for corporeality. _But it’s different_ , Happy thought. _Feist’s dream of “myself” is unusually strong, but it’s still a feeling other ghosts understand. Normal. Right_? Happy worried his “myself” was impossible. The fantasy that there was a ghost in New Home City who shared his secret felt better than the dubious chance it would be confirmed. So Happy had procrastinated.

Hearing about the other two ghosts in the trio hadn’t made him any more eager to visit. All of Feist’s glowing descriptions of Remhalciyoo added up in Happy’s mind to: “Just like Staid, except more perceptive;” not a person Happy wanted around when he finally met Harkmello. The defining traits of the third ghost were apparently “energetic; talks a lot,” and that just sounded like competition for attention.

The storage room’s trapdoor closed with a clattering slam, muffled through the wall. Feist would be out in a moment, and they would leave for New Home City. Happy’s eagerness and fear intensified. There was no way to back out of this trip without being rude. It was time to go.

* * * * *

Happy was familiar with several districts in New Home City, the ritzy entertainment district being his favorite. He had known the business district that the three Blooks passed through now; though it had changed in the years since he had last seen it. Neglected streets and boarded-up shops reflected the collapse of the Dreemurr family; whether it had happened gradually, or all at once, he didn’t want to ask. The mood was subdued, the inhabitants exchanged only short greetings and walked to their destinations with brisk steps.

The last corporeal business they passed was a tiny bakery, so new that the sign on its roof — a picture of a piece of cake, cartoonishly round and brightly colored, as big as their television — still gave off a faint scent of paint. Seeing it comforted Happy; that was the monster optimism he remembered.

Just past the bakery they crossed over into the edge of Ghost Town and followed a back street. Here the buildings and walkways weren’t just faded or shuttered, but completely dilapidated, brazenly unkempt, grotesquely broken-down. Seeing it made Happy feel sick; at first because he was ashamed that ghosts liked to live this way, and then because he was ashamed at himself for feeling ashamed.

A sudden high-pitched howl of disapproval sounded from further down the street, and scattered his thoughts. There was movement up ahead, a few figures in a close knot; otherwise the street looked empty. Napstablook went invisible immediately. Feist lifted off the ground to get a better view, and stared, mouth tight and eyes narrowed, quivering slightly. _Almost like a pointer dog_ , Happy thought, not that he ever would have said it; and he also rose up to look.

It was two corporeal monsters: one, a green lizard, held a compact, boxy camera; the other had a human-like body with a geometric diamond-shaped head. A ghost was trying to shoo them away, charging in with a “Boo!” and vanishing. ( _Ugh, could you get any more stereotypical_ , Happy cringed, and felt a new wave of shame.) As Happy and Feist watched, the lizard lifted his camera to face the ghost as they rushed forward and sprang into visibility. A square of paper emerged from the camera’s front.

Feist started forward, form slanting in the air with focused anger, but slowed and stopped after a couple meters, glancing back towards the patch of empty-looking air that was Napstablook and muttering, “We should go. We should find a way around. We should get out of here.” Napstablook made a tiny moan of agreement.

Happy had already closed half the distance to the strangers. “Yoo-hoo!” His voice echoed off the empty buildings like a rung gong as he approached.

Diamond-head looked up, and the planes of his face broke into a leer.

Happy swooped to within camera range, dancing up and down in the air, batting his eyes. “What fun! Me next! Take my photo!”

Lizard peeked from behind the camera, eyebrow ridges cocked in surprise. Diamond-head’s unkind smile slipped a bit, but he elbowed Lizard. The camera clicked and whirred. The paper square spooled out.

Happy darted forward, tugging the photo from the camera with both arm-nubs, letting his inertia carry the edge of his ectoplasm to brush against the lizard’s elbows. Happy felt the cringe, the shiver of fear that passed through her corporeal body at the ghostly touch. _Good._

“Again,” he crooned. The corporeal pair blinked. Happy made an outrageous moue. “Oh please, don’t stop now! Can’t you see I’m gorgeous?” He extended one stubby arm and framed his face.

The lizard leaned backwards, her thoughts evident from her hunched posture and darting eyes. Ghosts are one thing. But this one’s nuts. She took a step back, and then another. On the third step she stopped, foot halted before it touched the ground; her eyes opened wide and a shudder seized her shoulders. From just behind her back came a titter. The laugh was joined by another, and another. She pressed the camera into the stiff arms of diamond-head and tried to dash past him. Then she stopped short and staggered back, body stiffening with a shock like a rung xylophone bar. The laughter spread until Happy and the corporeal pair were surrounded by a circle of it: a ring of invisible ghosts.

An audience. Happy extended his other arm and approximated hugging himself, undulating in the air in a dance-like motion that made him feel very sexy indeed; if he had shoulders he would have been rolling them. “Take my picture,” he said. “Isn’t that what you came here for?”

Diamond-head lifted the camera with trembling hands and took another photo. And another. And another. Self-developing squares of photo paper with fuzzy gray images piled at his feet. Snap. Eject Snap. Eject. His fear-stiffened thumb pressed hard against the shutter button, producing one blurred photograph after another.

Lizard paced in a tightening circle. Each turn lead her to another invisible wall of ectoplasm. It shifted and prevented retreat, impassive and unyielding, a road block that shifted to meet her outstretched hands. She wrapped her tail across her chest, a protective bandolera, retreated until she was back-to-back with Diamond-head

Happy sidled up to Diamond-head. He let his ectoplasm shimmy across the photographer’s goose-fleshed skin, eliciting a shiver. “Now, one of us. Together,” he said. “Because we’ve become,” he pressed his mouth near Diamond-head’s ear-hole and whispered, “such good friends.”

Diamond-head glanced to Lizard, but his partner was curled in on herself and rigid with fright.

Happy dipped to the ground and lifted a photo of himself. He turned back to Diamond-head and pouted, his lips stuck out and brow raised in a parody of regret, but his eyes hard. “Oh dear.” Neither of the pranksters moved. “Well. Next time, then. If you ever have the urge to photograph ghosts again, I’ll be here. Waiting.” Happy’s voice dropped low and husky. “With everyone else.”

On cue, a chorus of high-pitched giggles and dark jeers rippled down the street, indicating a single, direct path out of Ghost Town. Happy’s soul pulsed with triumph like a neon sign.

Diamond-head took a tentative step forward. Meeting no resistance, he kept walking. Lizard watched him, cast a wary glance at the street, and followed in a rush. As they disappeared around the next side-street the assembled ghosts erupted into cheers and blinked into visibility. There were only five individuals besides the Blooks; some had cast duplicates to create the illusion of a crowd. “Good thinking, Cousin!” said the one they’d seen rushing the photographer, without a hint of resentment. Two other ghosts gave brief parting nods of acknowledgement, smiles of gratitude, and sailed away; shy, maybe ( _or intimidated_ , Happy thought with self-admiration). As they left they passed Feist and Napstablook, who were approaching, goggling. Feist’s face shifted between stunned amazement and dyspeptic tightness; Napstablook’s expression was simple, open relief.

Another ghost joined the first stranger, looked Happy over, and said, “Welcome, Cousin! … Haven’t seen you around here before?” Happy returned the greeting, but before he could answer the question, a small, sunset-orange ghost appeared beside him. “They’re my guest! These other two also! They’ve just got here so they’re probably tired. But we’ll be out later!”

The second strange ghost said, “Oh. Of course. Later, then,” and the two nodded their goodbyes.

“Fleet!” Napstablook exclaimed, hurrying forward as soon as the strangers were gone. They touched cheeks with the orange ghost in greeting.

Feist settled on a friendly expression and made the introduction. “Happstablook, meet Flederhoom.”

Flederhoom hopped forward. “Fleet is fine. Glad you finally made it! That was awesome!”

Happstablook rose a little higher in the air than necessary and approached Fleet with measured speed, the legless equivalent of a strut. His voice was resonant with freshly-inflated importance. “Call me Happy. It’s an absolute delight to meet you, I’ve heard lovely things about you and your family.” Fleet grinned and made another little bounce to show appreciation for the compliment. Happy’s smile deepened from polite to heartfelt. To think, he’d been afraid this amiable little ghost would overshadow him.

Fleet extended an arm to point at the photo Happy was holding. “You gotta shake that, to make the picture come in. Here, let me show you. ‘Scuse me.” Fleet took the photo from Happy’s arm with a short deft motion, and shook it up and down with giddy speed that vibrated their entire form. Napstablook giggled. Fleet looked at the photo, gave a squint of satisfaction, and handed it back. Happy knew this type of photo developed at the same speed whether or not you shook it, but he supposed if you were so impatient that you could never resist shaking it, you’d assume it had to be done that way. He played along with a nod, and took the photo offered to him.

He took a look and tilted it back towards Fleet. “It’s still not developed.”

Fleet leaned over for another look. “Yeah, it is.”

“It is? Oh my!” Happy crowed, looking closer. “This is hilarious!”

It was horrifying. This pink miasma, this smudge, this migraine-hallucination with eyespots… was him. His reflection, the image of himself he caught in mirrors and still dark water, wasn’t something he enjoyed, but at least it existed. He’d heard rumors that ghosts didn’t show up properly on film. This was a cruel way to get that rumor confirmed.

“Do you want to keep it?” asked Fleet. “Up to you. Lots of ghosts destroy theirs. If you don’t want it, but you don’t want to destroy it either, I’ll take it… if that’s okay with you, of course.”

Happy stared at the photo for a long moment, face motionless, and then handed it over. Fleet tucked it under an arm and turned to Feist, but before he could say anything more Happy made a sound — he’d intended a suave cough, but it came out more like a yelp. “Actually… I would… keep it.” Fleet handed the photo over without hesitation. Happy kept the picture-side turned away from him as he beckoned Napstablook over and tucked it into their knapsack.

Meanwhile, Feist’s tight expression had returned and hardened into a glare. “So those… those… those were the Ghost Hunters?”

“Nuh-huh,” Fleet answered. “Not the ones you’re thinking of, anyway, from back when we first met; those early ones were just kids, looking for kicks. As much as they bothered us they weren’t really mean-spirited, they just didn’t stop to think, ask us how we felt. Turned out the haunting only upped the ante. Then we thought to talk to the parents, and that pretty much put a stop to that. They apologized. These ones, though…” Fleet’s face set into a pointed frown. “Eugh. They’re newcomers. They say Ghost Town is too spooky, is what I hear. But we were here first and we’re not going anywhere. And that’s all the time I want to give to that.” Their welcoming glow reappeared instantaneously. “The rest of the family’s at home, waiting to see you. C’mon!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My beta-reader/editor re-wrote a portion in the middle of this chapter
> 
> Next chapter will be titled: "Romance!"


	11. Romance!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads-up -- this chapter gets a little spicy in the middle. It doesn't merit an M rating, but if there were an "older teens" rating I'd have used it.

Fleet and Feist took the lead, side-by-side, and Happy and Napster trailed behind. Napster’s eyes ran over the buildings they passed, a subtle smile of appreciation and anticipation gracing their face. Happy felt his anxiety creeping back and tried to hold on to the feeling of capability and power his performance-attack had given him. His gaze skimmed along the buildings lining the street, snagging on every crack and stain. As he watched the street passing beneath them he felt the unnerving weight of watching eyes. He looked up just in time to catch the end of a backwards look from Feist; it set his sense of suspicion jangling. He speeded up to float beside Feist. “… Yes?” Flederhoom looked at him too now, not unkindly, but with an intensity… with curiosity? Happy didn’t like it. He loved being watched, but not in any sort of way that might reveal something he wasn’t trying to display.

“Harkmello’s taking a break from work,” Flederhoom said; by the neatly-clipped tone it was apparently meant as an answer.

“… and so are we,” Happy said, “So…?”

Feist broke in, saying, “It’s nothing” with a casualness that didn’t sound like a lie but didn’t quite reach the level of genuine, not breaking stride. “It’s, it’s, it’s… just when we arrive… follow my lead, okay? Just so everyone’s comfortable.” Flederhoom gave a short nod at Feist’s words.

Dread dripped through Happy like acid-tears burning through paper. What was this about? He had been told over and over that the New Home ghosts were welcoming, open-minded and easygoing… Was Harkmello actually a petty tyrant in the household? Was there some sort of feud? He gathered his thoughts to demand a proper answer…

But they had already arrived, and Feist hustled away to navigate the house’s narrow staircase. The three incorporeal ghosts let Feist set the pace, filing through the open air of the stairwell behind the dummy body instead of phasing through the walls or floors. Three flights up and they rounded the bannister, its thick wooden post worn smooth on top from the hands of previous corporeal inhabitants and layered with dust from their absence. Through the door, and the long topmost room opened in front of them: cluttered desk, window, slanting ceiling papered with photographs — Happy had known to expect the photos, and he kept his eyes away from them — and two dressing dummies. Happy was struck by how individual the dummies had become.

Even though Staid, Feist, Remi, and Hark inhabited dummies that were originally made identical, the bodies had adapted and molded to the personalities possessing them. Staid wore their body like an old work-boot, for practicality and comfort rather than looks. Feist’s body was likewise sturdy, but at the same time projected an air of pride and identity: a boot worn for a uniform or, perhaps more accurately, countercultural fashion. Remi’s strong attachment to their body was plain to see: they didn’t so much wear it as settle down into it, the stiches cradling the soul inside like the weave of a hammock. Hark wore the tall body with poise; their stiches made Happy think _corset_ , and the erotic nature of the thought surprised him. He cast a focused, surreptitious look at Hark, but their current body didn’t show any more masculinity or femininity than the other two inhabited dummies in the room.

Remhalciyoo looked up and called to them as they entered, “Welcome, Blooks! Good to see you.”

Napstablook flew ahead of the group and touched their cheek to Remi’s in greeting, and then Hark’s cheek in turn. Feist next — Happy watched carefully, remembering Feist’s request to imitate. Feist touched cheeks with Remi as Napster had; but to Hark, gave a nod of greeting, which they returned with a graceful tilt of their own head and a smile. Did Hark dislike being touched? Why would Feist be so dicey about something so mundane? And, if they made an exception, of course it _would_ be for Napstablook. Happy found himself irritated. He followed Feist’s actions and received the same nod and smile.

Remi asked about their trip from Waterfall to New Home, standard introductory conversation. Feist gave Happy a small nod, encouraging him to answer. He began with brief statements, but Remi leaned in and asked eager, informed questions about the communities they passed on the way, so Happy warmed up to his story. When he reached the part with the Ghost Hunters, however, Flederhoom cut him off with quick, deft words: “Not just now. I’ll tell that part later.”

Happy dutifully looked to Feist for guidance. Feist rerouted the conversation, asking Remi, “How have you been?”

Remi sighed, the sound welling up from deep inside their cotton torso. Flederhoom and Hark exchanged a look that shared a single smile between them: Fleet’s half-smile wry, Hark’s half-smile patient. Happy diagnosed the look: small talk was over, and the listeners were about to get a hefty portion of sincerity.

“I’m well, but I could be even better,” said Remi. “This body I’m inhabiting, it’s my true body. I’ve known that since right after I got it. I’m ready to fuse — but it just wasn’t happening. Now I’ve realized what must be stopping me, my unfinished business: I’m the only Viyoo left in the Underground. It doesn’t feel right to me, to fuse before there are more, and be the last one of a lineage that’s so old and rich in history.” They turned their head to indicate Fleet and Hark, who now wore full and supportive smiles. “These two are the best. We’ve talked about it, and we’ll raise the child together — or children, if that happened, but we Viyoo tend to have just one bud at a time…” They stopped themself, concerned that their preoccupation with genealogy and tradition might be boring to the guests; but the Blooks were watching with open expressions, and Happy nodded at them to continue.

“But it’s really difficult now. Things have been so somber since… you know.” Remi looked to Happy, and then their gaze dropped. “So I was glad to hear you’d be visiting. I’ve heard so many good things about you, about what a joy you are to have around. I was hoping… you could help me get pregnant.”

Happy’s insides contracted, but before his shock could reach his face he realized: _I’m thinking like a corporeal person and not a ghost._ Remi wanted to replicate themself; it had nothing to do with sex, let alone incest. To get pregnant they needed to feel abundantly hopeful; Happy’s reputation was for being optimistic and cheerful, and encouraging others to feel the same.

Their shyness in asking for what was essentially just friendly company and kind words struck Happy as unbearably sweet. He gave them a crooked smile. “Of course. If I can play some small part in helping there be more of you in this world, that would help me live up to _my_ name.”

Feist’s button eyes angled to the ceiling in an eye-roll that was so exaggerated it was practically audible, but Happy didn’t care: he was playing to his audience. Remi chuckled, a beige blush glowing in their cheeks. “You’re just as charming as I’d heard. …Oh, I’m glad! I’ve been trying for such a long time, I was just about to give up and go drown my frustration in cake — you saw that new bakery on your way in, right? Now I know: being cheerful all the time can be exhausting, can’t it?”

Happy blinked. He paused, and answered, “Yes!” He was surprised at the relief he felt at Remi’s words; and the exasperation, now that he had permission to feel it. Everyone else assumed that being happy, projecting happiness, was simply automatic for him; but it took energy, sometimes tiring effort. Feist had given him credit for keeping Staid alive through the emotional aftermath of the Dreemurr family’s tragedy; now he knew that others had heard that praise and admiration as well, and that was immensely gratifying. For the most part he was used to being resented for his aggressive cheerfulness more than he was appreciated for it.

… Like now. Feist’s lip curled, sardonic. “It’s too bad there isn’t a way to translate your charm into gold.”

Napstablook spoke up. “… Why not?”

It might have been a sincere question — probably, given Napster’s difficulty with grasping sarcasm — but Flederhoom picked it up as rhetoric. “Yeah! People pay gold for all sorts of things. Like, nowadays some Loox will pay you gold if you pick on them, and others will pay you gold if you don’t pick on them.”

Hark chimed in. “It’s true that there’s a real need for positivity since… since… everything changed. Not just for us ghosts either, I see it with the corporeal folk: they’re still not over the shock. I’ve had a lot of new business, all looking for reassurance, searching for something to raise their spirits.”

Happy couldn’t suppress a smirk. “Raise spirits…” He was still high off of the success of taunting the Ghost Hunters. He was getting a terrible idea. “I’m glad to help you find new optimism, Remi, as a friend and as family. Hopefully, soon you all will have a baby to love. And from what I’m hearing, now I’m thinking… there are probably other ghosts out there that want to have children, but are having trouble building up the hope for it… is that right?”

Befuddled by the direction the conversation was taking since their observation about the Loox, Fleet blinked. “I guess? Sure.”

“And with my charm, with my happiness, maybe I could help them. Maybe they would even be willing to pay a little for my time.” Happy chuckled low. “Forgive me for my roughspun country terminology, but I am only a snail rancher. I can’t help but be reminded of a word used in practices like ours… it’s ‘husbandry’.” The word felt good in his mouth. Husband…ry. This was already dangerous territory, and Happy was pushing the metaphor beyond all reason, but it felt so affirming to use the male terminology for himself that he couldn’t stop the words from flowing. “Speaking of ranching, when you have an individual whose role is to get others pregnant, there’s a word for it. So, if I spread hope to help ghosts grow their families, one might say that would make me… a stud?”

Feist turned the color of an overripe orange; the conversation between old and new family had been so pleasant, so normal, until now. Remi and Napster wore identical mild blank looks; they’d completely missed the meaning of the innuendo. But Hark made a muffled snort, trying to suppress laughter, a purple blush rising in their face. Happy zeroed in on them. Of course they’d follow his humor — they were used to dealing with corporeal people too.

Fleet was still trying to find some bearing in this unexpectedly strange conversation. “I guess? But… erm… heh! I don’t know if other ghosts would want to be called… whatever the word is for the one that’s paired with the stud.”

Happy no longer cared about the reactions of the other ghosts; now he was playing to Hark. His eyes caught at theirs as he purred, “Oh, if the stud were me, I think they’d be called ‘satisfied’.”

At his words, under the weight of his eyes, a hot violet flush flooded from the base of Hark’s cotton dummy body to the top of their head, and their giggle cut off in a gasp. Finally, Happy understood. All the odd details of the visit now made sense: the significance of Harkmello taking a break from their stressful job; how he and Feist had avoided touching themselves against Hark’s body, while perpetually-asexual Napster hadn’t had to follow the same etiquette; his subconscious supplying the thought that Harkmello was wearing their body like a sexy corset; the brash and jealous feelings that had infringed on his thoughts since he’d entered the house. Harkmello was in sexual mode.

Happy had seen Feist go through a sexual phase before, just after his siblings had returned from that first long trip to New Home. From some of the recorded ghost songs Napster had brought back ( _Can I borrow that one recording again? No, not the jingle advertising cereal… THAT one…_ ) he’d deduced that Feist had been doing some exploration during the vacation. But Feist’s fear and worry over how Staid would react to a body-inhabiting child, the dismay of watching Staid almost fall, and finally the overwhelming relief of neither disaster having come to pass, together triggered a full-blown phase. For several days, until the urge faded away, Feist’s habitual light saltiness had exploded into constant frustrated irritability. Feist would work the fields with ferocious energy and then pause, panting, eyes unfocused and glazed; or would try to find some privacy, and Napster, completely oblivious, would follow and fret about loneliness. Happy had found the whole situation hilarious.

This also explained Feist and Fleet’s inquisitive looks back at him on the road: they had been trying to ascertain whether or not he was also currently sexual. If he wasn’t — they must have assumed — he’d be as oblivious to Hark’s condition as Napstablook was; or at least he’d be unaffected by a short time of proximity, as would be the case for Feist. Feist had evidently decided that Happy hadn’t been acting any differently lately than he always did, and so decided he wasn’t. Feist had been right; and Feist had also been wrong. Because Happy was always in sexual mode.

It wasn’t that he was always aroused; but the typical ghost existed in a state of asexuality, in the company of other asexual ghosts, for most of their life. Periodically some communal hardship or disaster triggered a sexual phase, and those ghosts that hadn’t switched from the stress were stimulated to switch by the sounds and sight and thoughts of all the other ghosts who had. Whole communities of ghosts were temporarily transformed into carnivals of pleasure-seeking and family-reshuffling, while the small subset of ghosts who naturally had no sexual phase kept ghost society from turning into a complete bacchanalian anarchy.

Happy’s mind could turn to sexual thoughts at almost any given time, especially with the right inspiration. It was yet another aspect of himself that he hid, and hid well. In a way, it followed the normal logic of ghost sexuality: he felt stressed so often about so many things, and sometimes about nothing in particular at all — why shouldn’t a ghost often driven by anxiety have a sex drive to match? Still, it was yet another secret that made him feel different from other ghosts; made him feel defective.

Once, at a late-night party in the New Home entertainment district, he’d heard a drunk bird-type monster marveling over stories about human sexuality — “Clutches in midwinter! Courtship any day of the year! Makes no sense a-t’all.” — and the other party-goers, most of whose species had more complicated or more libertine approaches than the birds’, shared glances around the room; _Should we tell them?_ That had given Happy some sense of company among other monsters, or even among humans, if not among other ghosts.

But now he had company indeed. He narrowed his eyes at Hark, wondering how to communicate his interest.

Feist picked up on the timbre of tension in the room and it twinged something inside. It was a spark of jealousy, prickly and foreign, and to relieve it Feist scrambled to bring back the friendly conversation. “So! So… so. What were we… ah, we were talking about bodies! Mine’s good! Comfortable! Reliable! Um… Hark! How does the dummy body compare with your doll bodies?”

“That’s right!” Happy cut in, leaning towards Hark, “Feist and Napster told me you have multiple bodies. They said you gave them a tour when they first visited. How fascinating! If you would like, I’d love to visit your apartment and get acquainted with your body.” He gave a light cough. “… bodies.”

Hark’s mouth opened slightly as their breath fluttered, caught in their throat. Their eyes skimmed over Happy, their expression oscillating between surprise, uncertainty, and thirst. “…S… sure!” they managed.

“Splendid,” said Happy. And he phased down through the floor.

Hark’s eyes popped at the empty spot where Happy had dropped out of sight, and they glanced around at the other ghosts. Remi and Napster were still listening politely, unaware that the polite conversation had ended some time ago. Feist was also looking at the now-empty spot on the floor, eyebrows manifesting prominently in a glower. Flederhoom was looking at Hark, a surprised half-smile beginning to twist the corner of their mouth.

“’Scuse me,” said Hark. They phased downward in a rush, out of their body through the floor and into their apartment; their vacated dummy rocked on its stand.

Feist gaped, gave an offended cough, and after a moment of paralysis spun on the circular wooden base and clomped towards the stairwell. Napstablook looked from the retreating Feist to Remi and to Feist again, bewildered, and followed after their sibling.

“Wait...!” Flederhoom called — but Feist ignored them and was gone, with Napster close behind. Flederhoom floated a small backwards stagger. “Oh wow. What…!?” they exclaimed under their breath, half-laughing.

“What?” Remi asked, looking at them in genuine confusion.

Fleet lifted their brow at them. Wiggled it.

“What?” Remi asked again. They shook their head, expression still mild but voice starting to get an edge.

“Hark and Happy!” Fleet stage-whispered. They manifested their nubby arms and mashed them together.

“What? ...Oooooh,” Remi’s expression cleared, then took on a cast that was part acceptance, part chagrin. They looked in the direction of the lower apartment. “Are they going to make more work for me?”

* * * * *

Harkmello’s apartment was dusky compared to the room upstairs, and this section was tight, partitioned from the rest of the room by a curtain. The row of doll-bodies sitting against the wall stared with hard button eyes. For a moment Happy was convinced that he had overplayed himself catastrophically, that he was going to sit alone in this room, keeping company with the empty bodies, while the ghosts above tithered about his ineptitude.

But here was Hark, drifting down soft, coming to rest just above the floor in front of him. They avoided looking fully at him, but turned halfway and gesticulated towards the dolls with one arm. “Here’s the whole gang,” they said with a haltering attempt at a humorous tone, and peeked at him out of the corner of their eye, uncertain, waiting.

A series of thumps drummed down from the apartment above, moving door-wards, drawing their attention and eyes. Someone was coming, someone in a body, a single person moving with angry steps. Happy cursed Feist internally. Whatever he was going to do, he had little time to do it.

“I hear you’ve been stressed at work?” Happy began. “I… uh… know the feeling.”

Hark turned to him and their eyes crinkled in sympathy. “I’ve heard… the snail farm. I’m so sorry.”

That wasn’t where he wanted to go. He tried again. “The situation is unfortunate… but in one way, the timing couldn’t be better,” he crooned. He wondered if he were blushing now the way Harkmello had upstairs. He hoped so.

Now Hark caught his tone and looked at him full-on. “… you too?” they whispered.

Happy smiled and blinked… very… slowly.

Hark heaved a visceral sigh. “Ever since the Tragedy…”

“Ever since…?” Happy’s growing arousal was starting to affect the quality of his ectoplasm, making his voice deeper. He loved the sound of it.

“Not all the time, of course — it comes and goes. Especially after I’ve had a lot of really intense sessions with my clients… I have to take a break from listening for a while. It gets so I can’t concentrate, I just can’t stop thinking about…” Their voice tapered, their eyelids fluttered, “… things.”

How had he not realized before how poignantly beautiful their voice was? It was like a well-crafted theme song, capturing his attention, filling him with anticipation. Happy moved closer. “And you haven’t found anybody in Ghost Town to…” he rolled the meaning around in his mind, trying to find a phrase delicate enough to match Hark’s shy dance around the topic, “…comfort you?”

Hark’s gaze drifted to the ground, and a wrinkle appeared between their eyes. But then they caught some of Happy’s projected confidence, and they — _Happy caught himself thinking ‘she’_ — lifted their eyes to his, steady and intense, lower eyelids twitching upwards, smiling with a shadow of cockiness. “I wouldn’t court just anybody.”

Happy wanted to take this for the first move, and return it with an invitation of his own; but his insecurity wouldn’t let him, not yet. “You live with two other ghosts,” he heard himself point out, inwardly wincing that he’d sabotage his own chances.

Hark’s eyes widened momentarily, but then drifted to the side; they didn’t look offended, only wistful. “I guess a lot of ghosts would split up and start traditional families about now, wouldn’t they?”

Happy had actually thought that Hark, Remi and Fleet were a romantic threesome and was worrying he’d run afoul of their commitment by courting Hark; but that was right, ghosts didn’t do romantic commitment like corporeal folk. Unless this was a truly innovative relationship… But now that the words “a lot of ghosts” and “traditional” had been spoken, he was too afraid to clarify his question, or to ask.

“We like our family the way it is,” Hark continued — was there a hint of defensiveness? “Bringing a hope baby into the family, we can still care for each other the same way we are now — it’s just another person to love.” Their voice softened again. “Even with a new baby — I mean a new family inside our family — we could adjust. But we don’t want to split up.” They didn’t need to speak the reason: if two of the three made a new lineage together, one would have to leave the household with their child, while the second stayed behind with their child. That was just the way it was with ghosts.

A thud-thud-THUD sounded from the stairwell, and both ghosts jolted at the sound: Feist must have rushed too hard and fallen down the stairs. But the well-made cloth-and-wood dressing dummies were too durable to take damage from a simple spill — Happy knew from observation, and if Hark’s experience in their body told them otherwise they would have been alarmed, not just startled— so Happy was unconcerned. He moved closer to Hark. As his ectoplasm neared theirs he felt a force like static, like magnetism, urging him still closer; he stopped just before he touched them, relishing the sharp-sweetness of the pull.

Hark’s ectoplasmic surface shivered, and they turned just enough to pin him with one eye. Then they twisted, suddenly, bringing their mouth just beside his eyes. “Later,” they breathed. Where their breath touched his surface he felt a pang, and heat moved in waves through his ectoplasm. In that moment he no longer cared about the ghosts on the floor above or the ghosts approaching, about anyone but the ghost beside him. He wanted Remi and Fleet to hear their cries of pleasure rising through the floor. He wanted Feist to pull back the curtain and find one ectoplasmic form where there had been two.

But Hark had already drawn away, putting the width of the room between them, floating just beside the row of dolls. “We’re supposed to be talking about my bodies,” they reminded him, their voice husky.

Just behind Hark, on one side, the pink flower-crowned doll sat; on the other side was the baby-blue bowtie-wearing doll; Hark’s lavender ectoplasmic form hung in the air between them. Happy’s eyes lingered on the blue doll. It wasn’t what he had imagined: it looked too childish to appeal to him. He remembered the reason he had wanted to meet Hark in the first place.

Beyond the sky-blue curtain, across the length of the apartment, the door rattled on its hinges. “Locked,” Hark said, “To protect my bodies.”

Happy gathered his thoughts. “Okay, then… Tell me about those two bodies just behind you. You have one that looks male, and one that looks female.” Happy tried to force his voice to sound as casual as possible, as if this were a topic of idle curiosity. “Do you feel any different if you’re in one, or the other? Different from when you’re in your other bodies?” The question was shallow compared to what he wanted to ask, but it was as much as he could manage.

“You mean, do I feel different because they make me look like a man, or a woman?” Hark clarified. Happy forced himself to bob an assent. Hark’s eyes went distant, pointed at the wall just behind Happy, as they gave his question consideration. After several moments they answered. “I suppose so. The clothes a corporeal person wears, and how they groom their body, that affects how they feel, doesn’t it? Like, if they dress up in fancy clothes, they’ll feel more confident, and others will treat them with more respect, right? It’s pretty silly, but that’s often the way it is for them.” Happy’s eyes flicked to show that he understood, and to urge Hark to continue. “Monsters with gender sometimes act differently around me when I’m in one of those bodies or the other. It’s really interesting. I got those bodies because I thought wearing them would help me relate to my clients better, and it does. It also helps them open up to me.” Hark paused. “And also, I guess… not talking about my clients now, but just about me… wearing them helps me to express parts of my personality that I might not tend to otherwise.” Happy held his breath without realizing it. Hark’s gaze returned to Happy’s face. They wore an easy smile, and Happy’s heart sank at the sight of it. “But underneath I’m always myself, the Harkening Ghost, no matter what I’m wearing.” They gave a little bob in the air, satisfied with their answer.

Happy had gone numb. If Hark’s gender was only a matter of expression, and they were always a ghost… what did that make him? He forced his face into a smile to thank them for the explanation. Inside his head a lovingly-constructed and elaborate scene halted, crashed down, was obliterated. Something in his expression triggered Hark’s caregiving instincts, told them something was wrong, and a veil of concern drifted over their features. But just then a voice spoke from the far side of the curtain, muffled through the wooden door. It was Feist, voice quavering.

“Are you okay in there? It’s really quiet.”

Hark’s eyes flicked to the ceiling in annoyance, and their mouth opened slightly as they tried to construct a question, to ask Happy if he was all right, to ask what he was thinking. But before they could speak a word they heard Feist’s voice again, and this time it came from the inside of the wooden door. “Seriously, are you okay?”

Hark’s face broke into a pout of concern, and they turned and bustled through the curtain. “Don’t leave your body! Please. I… forgot the door was locked. I’m coming to open it now.”

Happy waited, still, alone with the empty bodies.

A click sounded from the far side of the room, and the scuff-thump of Feist’s wooden base approached. The corner of the curtain flicked out of sight and twisted up around the cord that held it against the ceiling, revealing the rest of the room: the carpet, the sofa, the lamp on its table. Feist walked through, eyes still hooded with suspicion, and Napster floated behind, their mouth in a fretful little line and their eyes darting between the other ghosts.

Hark entered the space with the bodies and spun around. “Do you two want to hear my stories again? I always enjoy talking about my bodies. But I have to tell you, not much has changed from the last time you got the tour. Happy and I have been enjoying our time together, though.” Their eyes flicked to Happy, and they gave him a secret smile.

The excitement and pleasure Happy had been feeling a few minutes earlier had completely drained out of him. As he watched Hark, watching him, he saw their smile falter and fade. He saw the exact moment when they realized that his desire for them had died. He felt sorry for them, and he felt guilty, but not strongly; it was hard to feel much of anything through his disappointment.

Harkmello did give the full stories of their bodies, all over again. They gave an even better tour than they had the first time, years before, because now Feist asked knowledgeable questions that turned it into a discussion. After several minutes Flederhoom and Remhalciyoo arrived, both through the doorway and not through the ceiling, Flederhoom uncharacteristically hesitant and shooting confused glances at Hark and Happy. Feist invited them into the conversation, and the three semi-corporeal ghosts dug into the topic of bodies, Flederhoom and Napstablook following along with a combination of manners and simple curiosity.

Happy was just as polite and appreciative as he needed to be. He asked questions; he nodded along to explanations. And when Hark tried to shoot him glances, he felt lanced by expectations he didn’t fulfill, and he looked away.

Finally he reached the end of his ability to keep up the charade. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he began, beginning to sway. “It’s been such a lot of excitement for one day. I need to get some air.”

“Would you like company?” Hark’s voice pinged with hope.

“Thank you, but I need time alone,” Happy answered.

Hark looked away, dejection saturating their features. Did the other ghosts see it? Happy didn’t look at the others; he didn’t care.

As Happy exited to the alley behind the building he took in the dingy stone, the drifted-in trash, the claustrophobic darkness of the cavern ceiling all over again. He had dreamed up a role and he had cast Hark in it. It had all been rumors and wishes. He shouldn’t be shocked that they had turned out to be what he had expected, and not what he had hoped for.

What would he do now? He thought of the two ghosts they had met on the way into town who had been so impressed with him. Maybe he could find them, see if he could bask in their admiration, try to capture that feeling again. But that would mean more pretending, and he didn’t have the energy. Maybe he would visit his old haunts, try to push the whole mess from his mind for a while, bury it under distraction and deal with it later.

He heard his name spoken behind him, urgent but not loud, and turned to look. It was Flederhoom. Their expression wasn’t vengeful, as Happy had feared; they were concerned. They caught up to him and asked, “Are you okay?”

Happy couldn’t begin to explain how he was feeling. His eyes fell to the pavement, his voice going as flat as the sides of the alley. “Yeah. I’m fine,” he said.

Flederhoom’s expression twitched and hardened. Nothing about their color changed, but somehow it no longer called to mind a peaceful sunset, but a scalding floe of lava. “Hark is hurting. If you won’t talk to them, at least help me find something to say to make them feel better.”

Happy could apologize, and he could make up some pleasant and self-deprecating excuse that would satisfy this prying little ghost; but by this point he didn’t want to. He was hurting, and he saw no way to ease his hurt. He wanted Fleet to hurt too. He searched their demeanor and his knowledge of them, found what looked like a tender spot, and made his attack. “You’re jealous.”

Within Fleet’s eyes Happy saw the words strike something and stick. He leaned forward and drove his attack in harder. “You want to court them yourself. But you don’t have the guts.”

Fleet’s eyes popped in shock, and they barked a short laugh of disbelief mixed with contempt. “I’m noble,” they spat.

Happy had never heard the word used like this, and he floundered. “You’re not acting very admirable,” he tossed out, still trying to front strength. This must be a cultural term, one any ghost in New Home would know; but he had always isolated himself from other ghosts, and so he didn’t.

“Inert,” they said, their voice dropping to a mutter. This word was cumbersome in their mouth; it was a word that carried shame. Happy didn’t know this word either. He stared, blank.

Now Fleet’s angry expression gave way to pity for Happy’s ignorance. “You know… like Napstablook.”

Finally Happy understood the meaning. Flederhoom was always asexual.

Happy had been ready to be the villain. Now he was just a fool, and it was so much worse. His mouth opened. Closed.

“Napstablook and Feisttablook are so nice,” Flederhoom whined. A second, unspoken clause echoed in Happy’s mind: _Why aren’t you?_ Happy didn’t respond.

Flederhoom turned their back on him and started away towards their home; but wheeled around again suddenly. They didn’t need to speak loudly for their voice to ring clearly in the hollow brick-and-stone alleyway. “Come back when you know how to behave around other ghosts.” They turned again towards home, but at the halfway mark they spun again and approached him again. “Or don’t come back.” They turned again and retreated, but stopped just before phasing through the wall and spoke one last time, without turning around. “But do come back,” they said, barely audible.

Happy stayed stony-faced under the onslaught. This conditional mercy was more painful than a simple rejection.

He didn’t go back. Instead, he was sought for and found, hours later, in his favorite old café, drinking glass after glass of alcohol, the flood of energy fueling nothing but regret and stubbornness. He expected Napstablook to come searching for him, their naive earnestness like a halo, trying to mend the broken places in the family the way they always did. He hoped it would be Flederhoom, having reversed their attitude yet again. But the person who came after him was Feist.

When Happy saw the dummy stumping down the street he gave a shiver, steeling himself for a tongue-thrashing… but as Feist drew closer, hesitating, Happy made out an expression that was bitter but not furious; more guilty than vindictive. That would explain why it wasn’t the others: some sense of duty. If Feist felt guilty over interrupting his courtship with Hark, he could play that angle to justify himself… but really, he thought with chagrin, he should be grateful instead. Without that interruption, where would he be now?

He’d had a dream all worked out, without even realizing it: in the deep recesses of his mind he had pictured Hark confessing to him that they secretly knew they were female; he would have been reassuring and strong and protective; the two of them would have shared a corporeal-style romance, just like in the movies; Hark would have helped him find a body, and his imagination couldn’t see what that body looked like but he could feel it, tall and weighty and masculine; they would have lived in the city, together, a corporeal family.

It had all been a foolish confection. Hark wasn’t like him. What would have really happened if their souls had touched? What might they have learned about him? He would have ended up where he was now, but worse. Or their pairing would have been called a success, and he would have returned to Blook Acres with nothing changed except that he’d have a stranger growing inside him, a stranger he’d be expected to teach how to be a ghost.

He could still salvage something of the situation. It would be so easy to play the naïf. _“So that’s what was happening? I’ve never felt that before. Suddenly it was all moving too fast. I got scared.”_ Feist knew him too well to believe that story, and Hark wouldn’t believe it because they’d been there; but the others would believe him, either because he could convince them or because it was the easiest way to return to some kind of normalcy, the visit they expected and wanted.

But that would be anti-climactic. So he threw a glass instead.

It was immensely satisfying: the graceful arc off the balcony, the sharp crash and shatter, the shards of glass scattering across the street, one skipping up to land on Feist’s wooden base. And Feist pulling back in shock, looking up, directing a venomous glare, so many words boiling just under the veneer of civility, and the sharp turn and huffy retreat — that was satisfying too.

Happy approached the bartender. “I broke a glass. I need to work off my debt,” he muttered to her.

She twitched her ears towards him as she filled another glass, and after handing it off to another waiting customer she waved a nonchalant hand. “It happens. Don’t worry about it.”

“I don’t have any money. I can’t pay for what I drank.”

Her ears perked stiff, and she looked straight at him, frowning, as the words flipped over in her thoughts. She knew this ghost, who returned a few times a year, who liked to sit at the bar and wax eloquent about the charm of the City, to describe the parties he’d been to and brag about the people he had met, who was always effusive in his praise for the drinks and the service. He could be a mild nuisance, so thirsty for attention that he became a distraction, but he had never been delinquent before.

Happy’s voice was rough and urgent. “I dropped the glass in the street. It’s a terrible mess. If I don’t clean it up right now it will cut someone. Please don’t make anyone else do it. I’m incorporeal so I can’t get hurt. And then let me come back and wash dishes. I’ll clean the inside of the stove. Anything. I need to make this right; I can’t even tell you how much I need to make this right.” It wasn’t about the glass. It was only tangentially about Hark.

The bartender, thrown off-balance, already being summoned by other customers, gave a nod of acquiescence. And so Happy hid in the kitchen, working tirelessly, for two days: polishing every surface until it was immaculate, chopping garnishes into perfect shapes, manning the fryer impervious to spatters of hot oil.

Eventually, when Feist and Napstablook came to collect him, to return to Blook Acres, none of them talked about what had happened. They’d had a pleasant stay in the City, and he’d had a pleasant stay in the City; they all left it at that. And Happy never visited Hark, Remi, and Fleet again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The terms "noble" and "inert" are borrowed from chemistry. Noble elements (gases or metals) do not usually react with other elements to form compounds.  
> "The noble gases have also been referred to as inert gases, but this label is deprecated as many noble gas compounds are now known." (wikipedia: noble gas)  
> Inert : deficient in active properties; especially : lacking a usual or anticipated chemical or biological action (Merriam-Webster)
> 
> On the advice of my beta-reader, since I let Happy run away with the narrative at the end of this chapter, I'll have a mini-chapter coming out in the next few weeks to wrap up what happened with the rest of the ghosts.
> 
> In next month's chapter we'll turn back to Patience. The inevitable is coming.


	12. Cake

Napstablook had perceived what was happening in Harkmello’s apartment, even though they didn’t understand it and weren’t sure they even wanted to understand. As the six ghosts made mundane conversation about cloth and wood bodies, an invisible flood of emotion had filled the room, full of clashing currents and undertows.

Napstablook had felt Feistablook’s agitation grow in the upper apartment and explode in Feist’s impulsive rush after Happy and Hark; in the lower apartment it was pinned down by force of will and indecision like a live butterfly in a specimen case, thrashing just underneath the smooth surface of polite conversational words. They had seen Happy’s mood completely transform between one floor and the next: engaged and intense and alive on the top floor, but on the lower floor, like a welcome mat set out in front of a deadbolted door. They had seen Flederhoom’s growing confusion, their eyes darting between Hark and Happy; and Napster understood that it didn’t stem from a lack of understanding as theirs did, but from understanding too much to reconcile. And Napstablook heard the tremble in Harkmello’s voice after Happy left, and saw thin acidic tears barely withheld in their eyes.

But Napstablook also saw that while Remi observed the other ghosts’ emotions, their own mood remained steady and their words proceeded smoothly one after the other. They took comfort in that.

When Happy said they needed time alone and exited the house, Flederhoom followed without hesitation. Feist turned to Harkmello with features set in a question. They turned away and said in a flat quiet voice, “I’d like time alone too.”

Feist turned in the direction of Happy and Fleet’s departure, fabric face set in lines so sharp it was like they had been ironed in, and yellow color holding a tinge of ember-orange. Remi touched Feist’s body in a soothing but restraining gesture, canvas whispering against canvas. “It’s been an eventful afternoon,” they said, their voice a little too loud for their proximity, “Let’s all get some rest.” Feist relented, subsiding into a slouch, and the two dummies hopped to the door and up the stairs.

Napstablook let the ghosts piloting bodies set the pace up the stairs; Feist was agile with practice, but Remi had to negotiate the climb with deliberate care. Following behind, Napster saw Remi lean close to Feist, and barely made out their words. “It will all turn out okay. Please trust me on this. Everything is a matter of timing.” Feist made a dubious grimace, but didn’t contradict the older ghost.

The uncertainty, and the strength and rawness of the unspoken emotions in the lower apartment buffeted Napstablook. They wanted to comfort their family and friends, but didn’t know how to begin. Tears welled in their eyes.

Entering through the door into the upper level, Remi caught sight of Napstablook’s expression. “Napster?” They asked, with a gentle tilt of their head, “Can you tell me what you’re thinking?”

Napstablook couldn’t. The words in their mind wouldn’t sit still long enough to be caught and used.

Remi chewed their lip, consulted their experiences, made a guess and ventured an answer. “Whatever you’re feeling now… or whatever you’re _not_ feeling… it’s okay. You don’t have to feel all the same things as everyone else at the same time. You’re enough the way you are.”

Remi’s meaning wasn’t really what they expected or needed to hear, but the very fact of their reassurance, the kind tone of their voice, settled Napstablook. Finally a thought gelled into language, a comforting and useful kind of thought.

“You said we could get cake?”

Remi laughed. The weight of tension eased; Napstablook took their first easy breath in an hour, and even Feist managed a half-smile. “That is an absolutely perfect idea,” Remi said. “Let’s go now. We’ll bring some back for the others too.”

Napstablook nibbled at the end of their arm. “… but… what if we get a flavor they don’t like, won’t they be disappointed?”

Remi inclined their head. “You can go downstairs and ask what they’d like, if you want to. The two of us will wait here.” They turned and thumped to the desk, opening a drawer and rifling about for gold. Feist was sullen, attention directed inwardly, eyes plastic-y in thought. Napstablook hesitated a moment and then phased through the floor.

They alighted just inside of the front door. Fleet had already returned; they were perched on the arm of the couch, their back towards Napstablook. Hark was lying face-down on the couch; Napstablook could just see the back of their head beyond the chair-arm.

Fleet was speaking, their voice soft but their consternation visible in their hunched posture. “I’m telling you, you’re lucky they showed their true colors now. You deserve better.”

Hark’s voice was high and thin, muffled through the couch cushion. “But it was going so well.”

“Any ghost that wouldn’t choose you must be a fool.”

A beat of silence, before Hark whimpered, “I know exactly what changed their mind. I know what I said.”

Fleet twitched as their attention was pricked and turned to look with one eye. “Oh. Hey, Napster.”

Napstablook shivered.

Fleet turned more fully towards them and their expression softened, gained a tinge of nervousness. “Hey. Um. You know I’m not talking about Happy’s soul, I’m just… upset with their choices right now. Nothing against you and Feist.”

Napstablook was relieved to hear them speak Happy’s name; so whatever Happy had done wasn’t bad enough to earn silent treatment. Napster let their confusion and worry slip away for some later time and returned to their reason for being there, clinging to its familiarity. They floated around the end of the couch and hovered, tapping the ends of their arms together. “…we’re going to get cake… and we’ll bring some back… what flavor do you like?”

Fleet’s eyes brightened at the idea.

Hark twisted onto their side. They stretched to the full extent of their ectoplasmic form, then curled tightly into themself, wincing. “Normal flavor. I want normal-flavor cake,” they moaned.

Napstablook blinked. “… so… vanilla?”

Fleet’s expression went flat again as they rose off the couch arm and floated close to Napstablook. “They like fruit flavors. And I want… um… um… whatever looks good. Thanks.”

Behind them Hark sighed and sank into the couch cushions, their ectoplasmic form merging into it and disappearing. Napstablook directed a fretful glance back at the couch and looked to Fleet for direction.

Fleet’s eyes were narrow with a weary tightness, but their voice was gentle and pleasant. “Go ahead and enjoy the bakery. Hark is going to be okay. They’re just going to be a couch for a while…”

“For a long time,” moaned the couch.

“… and then they’ll feel better.”

Napstablook hesitated. “… do you want to come with?”

Fleet’s expression slackened with resignation. “I should stay. In case Happy comes back while you’re away.” Then their gloominess slid away and their usual cheer shone through again. “You’re going to love it. Remi is going to love it. I’m glad you’ll see it together. Have a good time.”

* * * * *

As Feist, Remi, and Napstablook moved along the street, Remi cast a leery eye at the cavern ceiling and shivered. “My soul carries a memory of the sky, from the generations back before the Underground,” they explained. “I’ve never seen it myself. I’m not even totally sure what it should look like. But when I see the cavern ceiling it feels… wrong.” Their eyes settled on the street. “That’s why I spend most all of my time indoors. One of the reasons.” They gave a chuckle. “Viyoo aren’t really known for our adventurousness.”

The bakery’s checkerboard floor only had room for two white-clothed tables and a pair of high-legged chairs at a narrow counter flanking the display case. A dragon was holding down one of the single chairs with a multi-colored stack of mini-macarons.

Opposite the entrance was a double display case, shiny white shelves divided by a partition: one side was filled with the rich dark shine of chocolate glaze, the soft sugary peaks of frosted cupcakes, and the lively colors of lemon peel garnish and cherry toppers; the other side, more eclectic and uneven in selection but no less artfully arranged, held wares whose chocolate showed a dull white bloom, whose frosting had developed a sugary crust, whose fruits were shriveled and browned: ready to be made into ghost food.

Remi stared. The three ghosts lingered just inside the door for a minute. Realizing the Blooks were waiting on the older, city-native ghost to take the initiative, Remi collected themself and bopped the silver call bell. At the cheery ping a mackerel-tabby cat strolled out of the kitchen, dusting their hands off on their apron. “Pick-up, eat-in, or carry-out?” he asked.

“Eat-in,” Remi answered, their voice a little fluttery. “And we’ll get more to go.”

The cat gave a short nod and waited as the ghosts crowded around the ghost-food side of the case. They pointed out a frosted beet-root mini-bundt, a dark-chocolate sponge cake layered with raspberry and chocolate whipped cream and drizzled with chocolate liqueur, and a slice of rum raisin cake. He used crackling onionskin-thin paper to pile the food on a tray, said, “Sit anywhere,” and disappeared into the back.

Remi was still taking it in. “I guess we get… a whole table,” they said as the three ghosts pulled out the chairs and settled in. Napstablook tilted in question.

“Ah. Snowdin must be better. That’s good,” Remi said.

“We didn’t really… eat out in Snowdin much,” Feist said, voice subdued.

“Oh.” Remi gave a huff. “Corporeal food vendors around here usually don’t want their corporeal customers to see their food when it gets old enough for ghosts. They say it’ll make their cooking look icky.” They shrugged, affecting nonchalance. “Just about all of them do sell or barter to ghosts. But usually it’s just whatever is left over. And usually that part of their business is ‘carry-out only.’ And sometimes carry-out is the back door of the kitchen.” They cast a look of admiring wonder at the display case. “But this place! It’s not coincidence they’re right on the edge of Ghost Town. They want corporeal folk and ghosts to come in and eat together. This is how things should be.”

Napstablook bobbed and looked at Feist, eager to put the tumult from earlier in the day behind them. Feist was looking down at the table, frowning, thoughts elsewhere.

Napstablook kneaded their arms against the edge of the table. What should they do? Usually to show care they’d offer food, but that wasn’t really an option with plates of cake already on the way. They peeked at Remi. “Hey… after this, could we maybe… see if there’s a concert happening somewhere… or something?”

Remi paused in gazing at the bakery and leaned forward. “Good idea! I’m going to stay in and get some sleep, but I bet Fleet would like to go with you.”

Napster remembered what Remi had said to Happy earlier, before everything went uncomfortable and strange. “…maybe you could come with us too… I think you’d enjoy it.” They looked down at their plate. “Maybe… like you were saying before… maybe we could find music so good that it would help you have a baby and fuse with your body.”

Remi pursed their lips, brow drawn up in the middle. “You’re so thoughtful! But I’ve already given up…”

Napstablook’s face went long, stricken.

“… Just for now! I’d be a hypocrite if I said that everything is a matter of timing but didn’t follow that myself, wouldn’t I?” A hint of strain tightened the corners of their eyes; then they took a deep breath and the strain smoothed away. “I’m going to do just what I said I was going to. Take life as it comes. And eat a lot of cake.”

Napster smiled. They felt relieved; they hadn’t wanted to go to a concert anyway, they had only wanted to cheer their sibling and cousin. Goal 50 percent achieved so far… not bad.

At that moment the tray bearing their food exited from the kitchen, carried by an aqua-colored ghost. The edible ghost food had been extracted for them; now cake-shaped slices of energy gleamed gelatinously on the plates. “Enjoy!” the ghost baker/server chirruped as the plates were passed around.

Remi took a bite of the rum raisin cake and their eyes went wide. They set it back down on the plate in a motion like reverence and extended an arm-nub from their body to pound silently on the tabletop. “Uhhm. That… is… delicious!” Feist’s sullenness lightened, bit by bit, with every bite of the chocolate cake.

Napstablook tasted the beet-root mini-bundt. It was pretty good. Sweets weren’t really their thing; they preferred savory food like ghost sandwiches. But seeing Remi enthusiastic and Feist cheered, that was sweet to them.

* * * * *

On the way home Remi danced like a tipsy corporeal person, singing snatches of jaunty traditional ghost songs and skipping their wooden base over the road, swinging the three little bakery take-out boxes by the string that bound them. Napstablook joined in the singing with harmonious _ooo_ ’s; they didn’t know many lyrics, but they recognized the melodies of lots of traditional ghost songs, and could pick up any melody they didn’t know after one repetition. Feist tried to join in the merrymaking, but it took effort.

Arriving back at the house, they found Fleet back in the upper apartment. They were uncharacteristically slouched against the wall, but sprang upright into the air when the other ghosts arrived. “Haven’t seen Happy yet,” they said.

Remi turned a sympathetic frown at Feist and Napter, then hopped close and nuzzled Fleet. “Now I understand why you’ve been trying to get me to go to that bakery. It was wonderful! Thank you. Here.” They set down the boxes and opened the topmost. Inside was a purple-sweet-potato cupcake garnished with a chocolate-dipped purple-sweet-potato chip, still in solid form for transport. “Ooh! That _is_ a good-looking cake,” Fleet exclaimed, snatching it up and starting to nibble the energy out of it.

It was tacitly understood that Hark would come up and get their cake when they felt like it, and that the last box was reserved for Happy.

Remi excused themself to sleep, and curled their body under the recess of the desk. The cake Napstablook had eaten had settled weightily in their belly during the walk home, so they nestled in beside Remi.

A few hours later some renewed current of unease disturbed Napster out of their sleep. They lay still, listening to Feist and Fleet talk in hushed voices.

“I know, I know… but I know where they must’ve gone.”

Fleet’s answer was gentle but dubious. “You sure? And now? I mean… maybe they went looking for someone else to court. Likely even. Just saying. Gone this long… probably they’ve found someone.”

Napster didn’t hear a spoken response, but they did hear the soft scrape of Feist’s wooden base against the wooden floor, the tiny clack of the door latch and a slow gentle thud of the door closing. Their siblings were always dealing in emotions and situations outside their experience, it seemed; at some point all they could do was wait and see what happened. Napstablook curled against Remi’s solid back and went back to sleep.

* * * * *

Thumping along the city streets, cake box clutched in one arm, destination fixed firmly in mind, Feist let a resurgence of frustration and anger from earlier in the day swell up and take on an additional dimension of sour betrayal. As they’d all grown up on Blook Acres, Happy had always dominated attention while Feist had felt like an outsider in the family but lacked words to describe why. Even when the need for a body came through in sharp focus it had been too hard, too frightening to acknowledge and speak out loud. New Home City, with all its corporeal and semi-corporeal ghost inhabitants, had finally given Feist the sense of belonging that had always been missing. Untraditional as it might be, Remi and their found family had nurtured Feist’s growth into adulthood and identity in a way that the other Blooks never had.

All Feist had wanted was to share that joy with Happy. They’d always had their differences, but they weren’t only bound by their literal lineage, but by an emotional connection that persisted no matter how they strained it, and by the flashes of kindness they showed to each other. But Happy couldn’t simply accept the kindness, they couldn’t stand to be a gracious guest, they couldn’t muster the humility to exist as the exception to an established family for even a moment, could they? Somehow it must have been intolerable to Happy that Feist finally had something good to share; they had to act out, they had to sabotage it, they had to have the whole of everyone’s attention at all times or nothing at all.

But… but… but… and here the whirling frustration inside Feist died down as a new thought rose up. Feist had always acted out in Blook Acres, had started conflict with Happy and Napster, had lashed out in anger, because of fear, because of pain, because of loneliness. The situation was flipped here. Happy was the outsider, was out-of-place and out-of-depth and a stranger. Maybe, just maybe, they were an insatiable attention hog for the same reasons Feist was an incorrigible fight-starter.

Feist shifted the box containing Happy’s cake from arm to arm. Maybe there was still a way to salvage this situation. To bring together the two sides of family, just the way Feist had expected and hoped would happen. Even to reconcile Happy and Hark after the catastrophe of their failed courtship… not to have them complete that courtship — that thought was strangely painful — but to salve Hark’s self-doubt and to give them some sense of closure.

Happy turned out to be exactly where Feist knew they would be: sitting under the lime-green and fuchsia umbrellas of their favorite café, the one where they had waited for Feist and Napster years ago during their first business trip to New Home City without Staid. It felt so long ago now.

Feist took three deep, steadying breaths and moved forward.

Then Happy threw a glass.

It shattered, its shards skipping over the surface of the street as if with aggressive intention, one bouncing ahead to land on Feist’s base. Up on the balcony, Happy watched, expression inscrutable… and then looked away.

The box of cake tilted, slipped, fell out of Feist’s arms. It cracked open on impact, and its contents ejected to form a dismal pink-lemonade-frosted heap on the road.

Feist stormed away.

* * * * *

Feist’s return to the house was the opposite of the departure; the door slammed, the latch clanged, the wooden dummy-base stomped like a mallet on a timpani. Napstablook awoke with a start and shot upwards through the desk; Remi reflexively tried to follow them and banged their head against the desktop’s underside.

Feist hovered in the center of the room, shaking. It felt like even the most incisive, the most difficult, the best efforts at bringing harmony into the family only ended in more complication, more misunderstanding, more bad feelings.

So Feist lied. “Happy sends their apologies. And thanks you for the cake. But… but… but… they still feel awkward. So they’re not going to come back this trip.”

Remi nodded in calm acceptance. Napster, breath still returning to normal after their shock at the loud sudden noise, regarded Feist wordlessly with their deep eyes. Remi drifted to Feist, their base barely trailing and scraping lightly against the floor, and hugged Feist close with their chin.

“It will be okay,” they murmured. “I hope that doesn’t sound cold. I’ve just lived a while, I’ve heard a thousand stories. This will all turn out. Even though that doesn’t make it feel any easier.”

Feist hid against Remi’s shoulder, letting named and unnamed emotions rise up, flow through, play out.

* * * * *

The trip did turn out okay. Hark emerged from the lower apartment the next day looking sheepish, accepted the others’ obliquely-given words of comfort, and wolfed down their share of cake. While Feist didn’t get the hoped-for all-family reunion, the rest of the stay in New Home City was pleasant. And when Feist and Napstablook went to collect Happy, they found him unchanged from the sibling that had accompanied them to the City. They returned to Blook Acres the same way they had left it.

It was so much easier that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do apologize for the delay on this chapter. I told you all I'd deliver a mini-chapter wrapping up the aftermath of "Romance!" and then jump back into the larger storyline with the human child Patience... instead I wrote a full-length chapter of angst and that fantasy-novel cliche of describing food.
> 
> A chapter that catches up with the new human child... children, actually... is planned for next month's installment. 
> 
> In the meantime, I have a recommendation. I've started re-watching "Gargoyles", the Disney cartoon series from the 90s. Back in the day I loved it so much I recorded every episode off the TV onto VHS; but I haven't watched any in 15 years or so. Rewatching has made me realize, the show had a HUGE influence on the stories I like to read and write. Themes that I try to work with in "The Problem of Bodies" -- xenophobia, family-by-birth and family-by-choice, the ability of humans to be inhumane, social structures of non-human people / "monsters" and how non-human approaches to reproduction fit with those social structures -- are all dealt with in Gargoyles' 5-part pilot episode. (And I can't wait until later in the show where it gets into things like time travel and Shakespearean characters).


	13. Sparring

Happstablook was bored. Not the periodic, routine, shared boredom of waiting for snails to cycle to their next stage of life; and not the persistent, but thankfully also shared, boredom of seeing the monochromatic and unchanging walls and ceiling of the caverns surrounding Blook Acres. It was a boredom that, like the moisture in the air around Waterfall, crept and seeped and insinuated itself into everything: even planning to do work was exhausting, the thought of New Home City was laced with painful memories even months (Years? It was hard to keep track) after the last visit, and television had nothing to offer but triteness and reruns.

So he went in search of Napstablook. His plan was infallible: if they were in a good mood, he’d take comfort in their quiet steady contentment; if they were feeling dour, he’d try to cheer them up, and even though he’d likely fail the effort would cheer him up.

He checked each of their usual haunts, with no luck. They weren’t among the snail pens. They weren’t communing with the echo flowers. They weren’t at the spit of land just below Blook Acres’ caves that pointed out in the direction of Snowdin…

…But Feisttablook was.

Happy stopped while he was still just inside the mouth of the tunnel from Blook Acres, peeked around the edge and observed. Feist had found a jeweltone-green scarf somewhere — probably in the garbage dump — and was modeling it over the still dark water, turning this-way-and-that. Happy watched for a few minutes and then left silently. He might have approached and offered a compliment, but he couldn’t be sure whether Feist would accept his words as positivity or recoil in self-consciousness. He wasn’t in the mood to start drama.

Returning to the center of Blook Acres, Happy heard the faint, thin tones of Napstablook’s tape recorder playback through the wall of the blue house. _Of course, the last place I looked should have been the first place I looked_ , he thought, and leaned his head against the wall to see if he could recognize which of Napstablook’s tapes was being played.

The challenge was too easy. It was a common ghost folk song, one that predated the Underground, one that predated the Dreemurr dynasty, one whose origins had passed out of memory. Happy recognized the specific recording too; Napster had played it many times. A group of ghosts, a half-dozen or maybe ten, had come together in the City to commemorate the turning of a season, despite the fact that those who had been born after the exodus from Home City had never experienced a change in season. Ghosts on the surface had once held a great celebration at the end of each year’s harvest, after they had gleaned rotting fruits and vegetables and grain. They would party in a frenzy, saving up joyful memories in anticipation of the long quiet months when corporeal folk retreated to their homes and food was slow to spoil; they would invite corporeal monsters of all kinds to participate, and thank them for the improperly-stored food that would sustain them until thaw.

This song wasn’t directly related to the harvest celebrations. It was a simple song of longing that could be sung any time of the year, because it gave voice to an intrinsic fear at the heart of collectivist ghost society.

_I am here, my parent -- I want to come home_  
_Forgive my offenses -- I regret my past_  
_Don’t let me be cast out – I’m not a bad child_  
_I’m afraid to come to you – come here to meet me_

It sparked a bittersweet feeling in Happy, as this recording always did. The ensemble included a contralto with the deepest voice Happy had ever heard from a ghost; he would hear it and imagine that he was singing, that he had that voice instead of the thin soprano he shared with the other Blooks.

The song came to its close on a held note of harmony. Then there was clapping. Not the echoing sound of applause caught on tape and played back, but the sound of flesh striking against flesh. _Someone corporeal was inside the house._

Happy froze in shock. Then he phased through the wall.

The first image that registered in his mind was Napstablook’s face, the tape recorder cradled in one arm, their eyes widening in surprise and then crinkling in anticipation.

The person whose hands had clapped was kneeling on the floor. She was so unexpected, so out-of-place, that the words _“Who is that?”_ had almost flown out of Happy’s mouth before he realized that she was someone he had known for years.

Patience had changed since the Blooks had first met her; she had even changed in the relatively short time since Happy had last seen her. She had been growing taller in uneven bursts; her hips were wider where they rested atop her feet. Her hair had been re-styled, its exuberant cloud pulled into a cascade of dozens of minutely-plaited, perfectly-even braids down her back. Her face, though, still showed the soft charm of the baby they had first met, her features as delicate and dear as the curve of a snail’s shell. She also still wore her red ribbon, now looped around her neck in a loose bow. Otherwise she was wearing a simple tan long-sleeved shirt and skirt; a rough-spun dark-blue shawl was draped over her shoulders, and — oddly — she had a spot of black paint on her nose. Some sort of auburn-colored mound of hair sat on the floor behind her.

When she saw Happy her eyes lit and she sprang to her feet in a fluid motion without using her hands. The shawl pooled on the floor behind her, forgotten. She pulled him into a hug.

“Happy! I’m glad to see you!”

Happy’s instinctive manners kicked in, and he said, “I’m glad to see you too!” And he was. But his sense of reason followed close behind; although his joy was genuine, it wasn’t right for this situation. “How are you here?” he demanded.

“I walked here. Using my feet.” Patience smirked and pointed a foot, wiggling her toes inside her shoe.

Happy narrowed his eyes at her, unamused and trying to look stern. “Ha. Ha. Is this the first time you’ve been outside New Home City?”

“Yep!” She rocked back on her heels. “I kept asking and asking, and finally Toriel said I could, as long as Napster came with me, and if we came straight here to your home. She said I should invite you to come meet Anders.”

“… Who?”

A neat wrinkle of distaste appeared on the bridge of her nose. She tried to keep her voice light, but some undertone in it curdled. “My little brother.”

Happy blinked rapidly, trying to process. He looked to Napstablook; they weren’t surprised, only guilty that the news wasn’t coming out in a more orderly way. “Is he a… a human?” Happy gawked.

“I _guess_ so,” Patience drawled, rolling her eyes to the ceiling so her eyelashes fluttered. She gave a grin, and her expression brightened again. “Yes, he is. He fell down here a few weeks ago.”

Her moment of bitterness made sense. Toriel and Staid, naturally parental, had lavished on her all the attention a child could want, plus extra affection to make up for having to live in the ruins, plus more affection that they would have given to the children they had lost (Staid would never admit this, but to Happy — who knew — it was obvious). To suddenly have to share with another child, another special child, a child who was younger and therefore needier… Happy had to respect her maturity; in her place he would have been absolutely wild with jealousy.

Patience continued. “He’s been settling in okay. Staid’s excited for you to meet him. But before we go back… can we walk around here a bit longer?” Napstablook gave an uncertain bob. “There’s _so much_ to see out here! So many different kinds of people,” Patience punctuated her exclamation with a wave of her hand.

Happy cringed. “That’s… uh… not a good idea.”

Patience lowered her eyelashes and peered at him. “Why’s that?”

Was she testing her boundaries with him? Probing to see if he’d give the answer she already knew? Or had Toriel and Staid really not told her anything about Asgore’s rage and his declaration of war against humans, about the Royal Guard trained in anti-human combat? He floundered. “What if someone sees you and… wants to ask lots of embarrassing questions? Like… about… what it’s like to be a human?”

Patience made a bell-like peal of a laugh. “They won’t even… oh, I took it off!” She bent to retrieve the pile of hair on the floor by her feet, gave it a sharp shake, and nestled it onto her head, dividing it into two even parts and smoothing it over her shoulders with deft strokes. It was an old wig, rough and snarled… and it did look just like a pair of floppy spaniel-style ears. The paint on her nose made sense now too — an imitation of a rhinarium to complete the disguise. “Human? What human?” she said, tilting her head and widening her eyes into an overly-precious vacant stare.

Happy couldn’t help but be a little impressed, but he pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes in criticism. “Not bad. I guess. But some monsters can be dangerous if they get close to you, even though they might not mean to be. Have you thought of that?”

“Of course,” she purred, and reached under the hem of her skirt for her ankle. “If I ever get into trouble, I have… MY KNIFE!” She whipped it out and brandished it at arm’s length, the point quivering a hands-length from Happy’s face.

Happy didn’t flinch, but lowered his eyelids halfway in a bored expression. He extended an arm and touched the tip of the blade. “Sweetie… Noodle-Pie… This is plastic.”

“But I looked really fierce, didn’t I?” she exclaimed with relish.

Napstablook was trembling, moaning softly to themself.

Patience’s eyebrows rose into a soft peak of concern. “It’s okay Napster.” She proffered the blade, resting it on her open palm. “See? It’s not even sharp.”

Napster bent their face behind their arms, peeking above them at her. “oh oh oh. Knives aren’t scary. But you looked so mean.”

Patience coo’ed — an oddly familiar sound, and Happy realized with a shock that she must have learned it from Staid — and encircled Napster’s ectoplasmic form with her arms, patting their back.

So she was a little actress, as well as a master mooch and manipulator of worried parents. Maybe she could pull this travel-in-disguise business off after all. It was something to discuss with Staid and Toriel. Preferably sooner, rather than later… before anything gave him reason to doubt. He stoked up his enthusiasm and swooshed through the air to the door. “Why stay here any longer, when you’ve brought such exciting news? Let’s go back to Home right now. I can’t wait to meet… what did you say his name was?”

“Anders. But… can’t we stay just a little bit longer? Please?” She put on her most lambent begging eyes, but it was useless against someone who had perfected the technique years before. With a minimum of back-and-forth they were out of the house and heading in the direction of Home.

As the tunnel opened up onto the little spit of land there was Feist, still wearing the green scarf, still staring down into the limpid water.

Patience stopped short, watching. “They hate me,” she said. It held a tinge of sadness, of self-pity, but it was mostly a plain statement of fact, of resignation.

“Oh no, they don’t,” countered Happy. The words sounded forced and weak even in his own ears.

Patience stood still, peering through the mote-spotted humid air. Then a smile slowly spread across her face… a sly, wicked smile. “Watch this,” she murmured. “I’m going to make them mad.”

It was a bad idea. A very bad idea. But as much as Happy hadn’t wanted to start drama, he was always ready to watch drama. Curiosity stilled his better instincts and prevented whatever words he might have said to stop her.

Napstablook turned doleful eyes to her. “… oh no. Please don’t.”

Her eyes slid to Happy. He was silent; shamefully, irresistibly curious about what she was planning to do. She looked back at Napster, at their agitation and pleading expression. As she thought her eyes unfocused and moved back and forth, her gaze in the empty midground of her vision, as if she were reading.

She lifted her head. “Hey! Feist.”

Feist turned with a jolt, head jerking upright, eyes widening at seeing Patience, forehead knotting in worry.

“That looks… really nice,” Patience said.

Feist stood still, staring. Everyone stood still.

“Hey, um, we’re going back to Home. The door’s been opened, so… if you want to come with, you can bring your body inside.”

The quiet stretched out, broken only by the smallest of ripples as some distant fish stirred the surface of the water.

Feist spoke. “That sounds… nice. Pleasant. Inviting. Yes. I’ll come with.”

A new smile broke out on Patience’s face, a warm and genuine smile. As Feist bowed and bent to take off and fold the scarf, Napstablook drifted close and whispered in her ear. “I’m proud of you.” Her smile widened.

* * * * *

Staid was waiting at the door that divided the ruins of Home from the occupied Underground. Waiting outside the door, in fact — jittery, watching the trees with suspicion, turning their head this way and that, as if in fear an approaching enemy might be hiding in their blind spot.

As the young Blooks and human approached along the twilit forest path — Patience taking the lead, eager to take off her mud-soaked, frost-encrusted shoes — they heard Staid before they saw them, a single celebratory note called out in the gloom ahead and then hushed. There were no other sounds, except the padding of one pair of feet and an occasional tap of Feist’s wooden base against the frozen ground, until they were all inside the entrance and the door was closed securely behind them, and Staid embraced each of them in turn.

The journey down the tunnels to the old Dreemurr house passed quickly, as Patience chattered about what she’d seen in the Underground out beyond the door, the trees and the vistas and the people, all seen from a distance, all fascinating and beautiful.

They climbed the stairs single-file. Patience went first; as she rounded the bannister they heard her steps quicken at the top of the stairs, hurry across the room, and stop short, the sound replaced by a flurry of tutting and rustled fabric. Napstablook came next, and watched Toriel release Patience from her crushing bear-hug and look her over head-to-toe, brushing off her clothes and making the girl spin around to see for sure that she was uninjured.

Happy followed. His eyes swept the room, and… there! A human boy-child, short and stocky, bouncing lightly on the balls of his bare feet as he watched the strangers enter with bright observant eyes. He was wearing red leathery gloves on his hands, and an orange bandana knotted about his neck, and his shirt was patterned with grass-green stripes… oh… oh, those were Asriel’s old clothes.

He — Anders — was the first human boy Happstablook had ever seen. He expected he would feel something new at meeting him, but whether comforting or catastrophic he didn’t know. Anticipation and anxiety rose in him as he saw Anders look towards him, as the boy started across the floor towards him…

Anders wasn’t looking at Happy. He wasn’t moving towards Happy. His attention was directed past him, towards the clean, well-stuffed training dummy that had just settled on the floor at the head of the stairs.

When Feist’s pearlescent eyes turned and met his, Anders’s eyes asked a question. Feist’s eyes danced over him, nervous, uncomprehending.

Anders drew back one glove and punched Feist in the torso.

Feist recoiled, eyes gone wide with a hurt that was far deeper than physical pain. Anders’ eyes popped in surprise as the dummy bounced away from his hand, rose above the stairwell, fabric flashing yellow to orange, and dropped straight down to the lower floor, just behind a bewildered Staid.

Toriel bounded forward and swept Anders up in her arms. As he was pulled away Happy got a good look at his face. He looked confused.

Patience stepped to the side of the room, her eyes white-rimmed at the sudden chaos, a pallor creeping into her face. Napstablook was beside her, gone invisible, a reflex from childhood that they fell into easily here where childhood memories were so thick.

On the lower floor Feist hid under the shadow of the stair, leaning against the brick wall, gasping for air and trembling. Let down your guard for a moment around a human, and they would exploit it. Numbness crept just under the cloth exterior, where the force of the boy-child’s aggressive intent still reverberated. Feist’s soul shrank from the sensation, partially disassociating from the physical body.

Staid was pleading. “It’s all my fault! We play together, and when he saw that your body looks just like mine he must have thought you’d want to play the same way.”

To hear their own parent suggest that this body, that felt so right, _invited_ attack was incomprehensible, agonizing, intolerable. Feist turned partially, but didn’t look at Staid. “Play? You let him beat you?”

“We spar!” Staid’s voice rattled.

“He attacks and calls it playing. Haven’t we all seen it before? Way, way, way too much. Humans are violent.” Feist’s voice quavered.

Happy spoke, calm, quiet, almost monotonous, as he came down the stairs to join them. “Dogs are the same way.”

“Dogs. Dogs. DOGS. Right. I feel safer now,” Feist spat.

Happy stopped short, but then pushed ahead with his point. “Cats play-fight too,” he intoned. “Lots of corporeal folk play by sparring. It’s perfectly common.” A great swell of anger and bitterness at having his first encounter with a human boy ruined rose up inside him. His voice became more pleasant. “You would know that if you’d spent more time playing with friends and less time playing with clothes.”

Feist’s breath hissed on the intake. In the shadow under the stairs, one mother-of-pearl circle caught an angle of light and shone coldly at Happy. Then it bounced to Staid with a glint of fear. Staid’s mouth tightened, but they didn’t react otherwise. Maybe they had known all along that Feist’s interest in clothes hadn’t ended with that one childhood experience in the Snowdin frippery, and had respected it the only way they knew how, by giving it space. Maybe they felt they had no grounds to judge when they themself had been play-fighting, the very activity they had condemned Happy for on that same long-ago day in Snowdin. Or maybe their silence, the thin line of their mouth, was saying, _You’re broken_ … and in that moment, Feist couldn’t see past the specter of this last possibility.

At that moment there was a shuffling at the top of the stairs, and the light from the living room was partially eclipsed by Toriel’s broad shoulders. “We have something to say to Feist,” she called down.

“I’m sorry,” a little boy’s voice rang out. There was a moment’s pause, and a muffled alto whisper. “And I promise I won’t hit you ever, ever again,” he added. Anders’ voice wasn’t teary, or bitter; it had a sort of recital quality to it — he hadn’t internalized what was going on. He was too young to fully process what Feist, or anyone else, was feeling.

Feist didn’t speak, or move. Realization crept in: Anders’ aggression wasn’t premeditated or malicious, it was just an impulse. Somehow, that made it even more frightening.

Staid tried again. “See? Please, Feist. Take a deep breath and come back upstairs.”

Feist turned back towards the wall, canvas still twitching with the memory of the blow. “It’s not safe here. I’m going to go home.”

Staid’s soft tone was hardening. “He’s just a child. You’re an adult. You have to be bigger than this.” It was easier for them to break it down into adult-child relationships than to acknowledge that what they had taught Anders had hurt one of their other children.

Feist hunched over. Said nothing. Being dismissed felt even worse than being attacked.

A whine crept into Staid’s voice. “You can’t really be injured. He doesn’t hit very hard, he’s so little. And these bodies are tough — I have the same body you do, remember? They’re made strong, so they’re just as good for sparring as for modeling clothes.”

So, the belief that Staid finally understood what being corporeal meant, what it felt like, after having a body of their own — it was just a mistake. Now, it seemed they viewed their body as nothing more than a tool. Feist’s voice sounded quiet and distant but strong, like a boat’s horn heard through fog, with an edge of disbelief that there was reason to even speak the words. “My body wasn’t made to be beaten.”

Staid’s eye found Happy’s. Pleading silently for more help.

Happy’s emotions were twisted up with each other like a tangled mat of hair. On some level he had empathy for Feist, knowing how it was to feel a sense of self so strongly, even when it made sense to no one else; but on another level, he felt like Feist’s judgement on Anders was also a judgement on masculinity — on who he was. “If Feist wants to go home, they can go home,” Happy said, his voice almost amiable. “But I’m going to make my own decision, and that’s to go up and meet this human child. Hey, I’ll even spar with him, if that’s what you do for fun around here.”

Staid hesitated a moment more. They hesitated halfway up the stairs. They hesitated at the top of the stairs. But, in the end, they joined their two human children and two of their ghost children on the upper floor.

Reluctantly, Feist came back upstairs too, lingering at the margins of the others’ conversations, watching over their games with a wary eye.

Happy watched Feist surreptitiously, playing cards with Patience. As he was sparring with Anders, then chatting with Toriel, he saw Patience draw closer — across the room at this time, choosing an adjacent chair the next time — nearing Feist inch by inch. He saw her wordlessly offer a light touch of sympathy, the palm of her hand just barely caressing canvas. And he saw Feist accept it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt so excited about moving on with the story that I forgot to include a couple of notes when I first posted this chapter.
> 
> \- You may have known this or may have looked it up; "Anders" means "manly" -- it is Scandinavian, and like the Greek Andreas and English Andrew.
> 
> \- The "traditional ghost song" that appears early in the chapter is loosely based on a real traditional song from Madagascar. On YouTube there are at least a dozen different versions and covers of "Salakao". When I volunteered with the Peace Corps the language teachers sang it to our training group; we thought it was a song of welcome, or a song of blessing for a journey -- imagine my surprise when I looked up the lyrics on returning to the US and discovered it's about being in exile.
> 
> My favorite version of Salakao is by the group Voavy (it's included on a 2000 compilation album of traditional Malagasy songs that I purchased): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgFb0WzNBmQ  
> Here is an English translation of the lyrics: http://www.musicanet.org/textes/t/10/147660_en.htm


	14. Unintended

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added chapter notes to the end of the previous chapter several days after I posted it. If you didn't see the notes, please go back and take a look.

Spending time with Anders brought Happstablook confusion. It wasn’t through any fault of the boy-child’s. Happy found much to admire in the his energy, his confidence, and his curiosity; and most of all, his tenacity. When faced with an obstacle, the little human didn’t give up easily, the way monsters tended to do. Admittedly, at the very beginning he was prone to falling into tantrums, or simply to losing interest and wandering off. But Toriel and Staid gave him steady guidance, and he practiced on the old puzzles littered through the ruins of Home City, and after weeks and months had gone by he developed a sense of discipline and was well on his way to becoming a sharp problem-solver. But as much as Happy saw qualities in Anders that he respected and would like to have himself, he didn’t feel a sense of kinship with the boy the way he did with Patience. She reminded him of himself: gregarious and expressive and emotionally clever, and a right little diva.

_Maybe I’ve made a mistake?_ Happy wondered at one point. He looked into the still water beneath the boardwalks and bounced a thought off the pink shape reflection on the surface: _I am a woman_. He felt nothing for the statement besides a sort of distaste, as if he were starving and a bovine friend had offered to let him share a meal of grass. The thought held no attraction for him; it slipped out of his mind like an algae-covered lilypad slipping away under a boat. He didn’t need to call his reflection a _they_ and see how it felt; everyone in his life did that, constantly, and it never stopped feeling _not-right_. He took a deep breath and thought down into the water, _I am a man_ , and there it was: the sense of right alignment, as if a hinge on the delivery cart that had been rattling and grating against wood for miles of travel had finally been nudged back into place.

There was some satisfaction in _knowing_. But it didn’t bring the possibility of “myself” any closer.

 

* * * * *

Feisttablook was caching a necklace — actually a bracelet lost by some large-handed monster, but it made a striking torq for a dummy’s slender neck — in a field of echo flowers on the swampy southern side of Waterfall, when Patience appeared. She had been walking the route between Home and Waterfall from time to time, allowed a little farther and then a little farther, eventually without Napstablook as chaperone, always wearing her monster costume. This time a smaller figure accompanied her. Anders’ orange bandana was pulled up over his nose, and a knit cap was pulled low to cover the tops of his ears and most of his forehead, so only his quick, bright eyes showed. His boxing gloves hung from his belt.

Anders had left his striped shirts behind in favor of a nondescript blue shirt. Before he had arrived, when Patience had first begun to venture out, Staid and Toriel had debated the benefits and risks of both styles of clothes: _If she wears stripes others will treat her with more care,_ argued the mother whose child had been adored by everyone in the Underground; _To care for someone you have to pay close attention to them, and that’s the last thing we want,_ argued the parent whose children’s best defensive strategy was to become invisible. In the end Staid’s view had prevailed, if only because Patience resented the aesthetic and the implications of child-stripes and had lobbied subtly and persistently for stripe-less clothes.

Feist hunched low under the nodding flowerheads; but not before Patience had caught sight of something yellow moving out among the luminescent blue. As Anders crouched onto his haunches, digging fat fingers into the black wet soil, Patience stood tall and let her eyes skim the field. She caught the glint of mother-of-pearl. She gazed for a minute or two more, affecting casualness. Then she turned, focused her eyes on a stand of tall grass, and gave a jolt. She curled her hands against her chest and made her fingers jagged with disgust, and squealed, “Eugh, a bug! A big spiky one!” Anders’ head shot up, rabbit-like. Patience pointed. “It went in there! Ooh, chase it away!” Anders bounded to the grass and parted the edge with a hand, peering in with intense concentration.

As Patience turned to the echo flower closest to her, the self-satisfaction on her face showed even from a distance. She lowered her face into the petals, then raised her eyes, her eyebrows arching in a question.

Her words passed from flower to flower, moving through the field to be reflexively regurgitated at the hiding ghost. “How are you, Feist?” Feist didn’t dare send a message back the same way — echo flowers could be unpredictable; they might relay an orderly response the same way they had Patience’s whisper, or they might send back a tidal wave of sound. Feist manifested an ectoplasmic copy into the air; the tiny ghost-form raised a tiny arm and waved.

Patience beamed with satisfaction. She lowered her face to the flowers again, and her whisper susurrated through the field to Feist. “He’s the worst.” Filtered through the flowers the words had gone flat and vegetative; it was impossible to accurately measure the tone.

Turning her head to watch Anders’ back recede as he industriously combed through the tall grass, Patience waited, listening to a rustling out in the field come closer and closer, until Feist’s voice rasped, urgent, from just behind the closest fringe of flowers. “What has he done to you?”

Patience’s throat made a _lemme tell you_ sound, like the purr of a cat who might be pleased or might be upset. She rolled her eyes and leaned towards the spot where she knew the ghost was concealed. “He broke my favorite teacup,” she whispered, pursing her lips with chagrin. “And he didn’t pick up his toys and Toriel stepped on a block and tripped and the freezer didn’t have any ice in it because he pulled out the plug because he wanted to see how it worked and we had just plugged it back in and Staid had to go all the way outside the door to get snow to put on her ankle and then Toriel wanted to rest so she said that we could go for a walk and she sounded really nice about it because she always sounds nice but I know she was fed up really but that’s okay because any reason to go outside is good and _here we are_. Oh. And he picks his nose.” She wrinkled her nose in a grimace and giggled.

Feist processed the torrent of words like a person walking through chest-deep water, eyes fixed on Patience’s expectant face. “Uh. Um. Ghosts don’t have noses.” Patience held up an open hand and nodded with a smirk of vindication. “I know, _right_!?” Her voice dropped even lower and she leaned close, conspiratorial. “Honestly, I would sell him to Asgore for one spider cider.”

Feist’s eyes popped with shock. Patience’s eyes lit up, eyebrows knitting in triumph. “Ah! Thought so. You’ll be honest with me, won’t you? Asgore’s not that bad, is he?”

Feist’s mouth open and closed wordlessly.

“Don’t tell on me,” Patience cajoled, “but I talked to some people in Snowdin. They all admire Asgore. They say he’s a good man, and a good leader. And Toriel was married to him, right? She wouldn’t marry someone horrible. So what’s with all that talk, _Be careful or Asgore will get you_?"

This was terribly precarious territory. Feist’s emotions and voice wavered. “There’s… um um um. Things. History. About the Underground. That you might not know.”

Patience’s face grew eager. “So let’s go back to Blook Acres and you can tell me all about it. Please?”

Feist made a hesitant half-nod and a creaking non-committal groan. _Better she hear the honest truth, the whole truth, rather than Staid’s mostly-redacted half-truths or Happy’s rose-tinted revisionist history — right?_

Just then they heard a high-pitched moan and Anders came stumbling through the grass back to them, his hands stretched stiffly out in front. He saw Feist, but his attention was totally occupied elsewhere. He had found a moth in the grass and grasped at it. His hands were smeared with damp gray wing-scales; the moth clung lopsidedly to his wrist, twitching. “Make it better,” he whined to Patience.

She frowned and laid a steadying hand on his shoulder. “Sorry, little brother. Its wings are all messed up, see? It’s suffering.” She hesitated for a moment, her eyes pinched with sadness, and then reached her other hand around in a swift decisive gesture and crushed the insect’s head. Anders whimpered and shook his hand spasmodically, flinging the moth corpse into the mud.

It wasn’t the fact of the death that shocked Feist; thousands of snails had been slaughtered on Blook Acres, and if business ever picked up they would be followed by thousands more. It was the accidental nature, the senselessness of it. To a powerful human soul all monster souls were as frail as insects. If Anders could kill an insect without the least bit of intent, could anyone really be safe? Would a Whimsun be next? A Migosp? Someone bigger?

Anders’ lip was trembling, and he wiped his hand against his shirt with quick, hard strokes. Patience swiped her sleeve against her eyes, then returned her hand to pat his back again. “Ew. Don’t do that. Let’s go wash our hands in the water. Then we’ll go up to Blook Acres…”

Anders shook his head with a quick, uneven motion, tears pooling in his eyes.

Patience took a half-step, knelt halfway and pivoted to look into his face. “We’ll go back Home?” she prompted, voice gentle.

He shook his head again and gave a big watery sniff. “You said we could see the mountain.”

Patience sighed, her shoulders slouching with resignation before squaring with responsibility. “Okay. We’ll keep going.” She guided him up with the hand on his back, and they started down the path. “See you later, Feist,” she directed back over her shoulder.

“Uh. Yeah. Sure.” Feist watched them go, and then stood rooted to the spot for several long minutes, lost in thought.

* * * * *

Only minutes later, dogs came to Blook Acres. A pair of them, both scenthounds — one whose face drooped in dignified folds and another with only the shallow wrinkles of youth — so similar they were clearly related, maybe mother and son or aunt and nephew. They didn’t wear ostentatious armor like many other dogs in Asgore’s service, but simple uniform shirts bearing the Delta Rune stitched on one side of the chest. The older dog’s long floppy ears would have fallen past her waist, but she had tied them together behind her head with an olive-green bow pressed in military-sharp corners.

Feeling restless after the encounter with the human children, Feist had sought something to do, had found Happy lounging in front of the TV, and had blocked his view until he’d agreed to work together. They’d just finished hauling out the tools they’d need to turn fallow dirt and replace rust-eaten metal fencing. Happy saw the dogs first; Feist saw his face freeze into an inscrutable, surface-deep half-smile and, feeling a crawling chill, turned to see them approaching.

The older dog took out a pencil and pad of paper; her ear-tips slipped over her shoulder and onto her hand, and she threw them back with a brisk, automatic gesture. “Hello there! I’m Officer Stormy, detective to King Asgore, and my associate here is Officer Scout. We’re doing a little investigation. There’s been some interesting reports, very interesting indeed… rumors of a human in the area.” She fixed a kindly, deep-set eye on Happstablook and Feisttablook. “You don’t happen to have seen any strange characters ‘round these parts… have you?”

Happy gave Feist an open, theatrical look of confusion — after a pause that was unnoticeable to strangers, but long to anyone who knew him well — and turned back to the dogs with wide vacant eyes and a shrill dubious tone. “A human? In the Underground? Are you serious?”

The younger dog held up a clear plastic bag; the bag contained a red ribbon.

“Cute!” Happy said, pitching his voice into a cheerful lilt to mask his dread. Feist just watched, paralyzed, time dragging slower and slower.

“This was found over in the Bridge Seeds room.” Stormy explained, and Scout gave the bag a little shake. “We were able to pick up a scent trail, but it gets a little gummed up south of here.”

Feist’s mind raced. Happy had been watching TV; didn’t know that the trail the dogs had found was fresh, that the human children had been walking the path through Waterfall not an hour previously. It had been a while since Patience had visited Blook Acres proper, and Anders had never visited. The farm was pungent with wet and rot, turned earth and snail slime; hopefully there was no trace of human scent left in the fields where they stood. But if the dogs entered the blue house — static, unkempt, only inhabited by two incorporeal ghosts who barely touched the floor where Patience had rested — they would surely be able to smell not-ghost, and that would bring suspicion down on all of them.

Happy was thinking along the same lines. “How do you even know what ‘human’ smells like?” He scoffed, making sure his tone was sharp with cynicism and mockery. “There hasn’t been a human down here since Chara. That was ages ago.”

Scout piped up, unable to suppress a tail-wag, eager to show off what he’d learned in training. “Just after Chara’s death, scientists in New Home City collected things that had belonged to them and used it to replicate their scent. Detectives like us have been using that scent to train how to track humans ever since.”

Happy scrunched his face. “Human B.O. perfume. Charming.”

Stormy raised her heavy brow and looked between ghost and dummy for another few agonizingly long seconds, then folded her notebook closed with a smooth deliberate motion and replaced the pencil in her pocket. “We’re just passing through now. On our way to talk to Gerson; he’s always served King Asgore faithfully, and if anyone knows about odd things happening around these parts, it’ll be him. But we’ll be close by again on our way back. Do give it some thought? Let us know if you remember anything.”

Happy and Feist exchanged a look; to strangers it would appear to be simply a shared shrug, but both understood that their souls were buzzing at the same frequency of panic.

“Yeah. Sure thing,” Happy let fall from his mouth.

Stormy gave a shallow little nod of acknowledgement and thanks, and Scout followed her lead. They moved on.

Happy watched them in grim silence until they rounded the corner out of Blook Acres and into the southern tunnel-juncture chamber. Paleness washed through him, and a shudder gripped his form. “Oh this is bad. Very bad.”

Anxious mustard-color bloomed over Feist’s cloth surface as well, the visual manifestation of a hot numbing sensation. Feist stared down at the dark spotted earth, eyes glossy with thought… and then spoke in a firm quiet voice to Happy. “You find Napstablook. Tell them what’s happening. Go over it with them until you’re sure that they understand — like really understand — and that they don’t just understand, they remember. I’ll go to Home City. I’ll tell them.”

As much as Happy enjoyed being in charge and telling others what to do, now his mind was crammed with intrusive images of Patience and Anders ravaged by dog soldiers, and it was a relief to have someone else step up and do the sensible thinking. He wheeled around and flew off to find Napstablook.

Feist lifted up off the ground and flew the dummy body around the southern bend of the tunnel, then rested its base in the rough dusty gravel off the trodden path and sat for a long, heavy moment. Dog monsters were frightening, with their teeth and their speed and their customs of aggression; even disciplined, well-mannered dogs like the detectives weren’t harmless. Dogs had the power to intimidate and mock and maim. But dogs’ magic was basic, and their attitudes generally straightforward, and their culture centered loyalty. There were other races of monster that had the potential to be much more dangerous.

But human potential surpassed that of any monster. Every human had unbelievable power, and unthinkable possibility.

Feist’s thoughts were overwhelmed with the remembered feeling of a blow and the sight of a dead moth. Vague, faded impressions of pain surfaced: inherited scraps of memories from the War, scars on the Blook soul.

Just beyond the next bend of the tunnel, Officer Stormy sensed the touch of eyes on her back and turned to see a ghost flying fast up along the path. It wasn’t the pink ghost that had scoffed at their human tracking, or the training dummy that had watched silently, but a burning-yellow ghost with a solemn, set face.

The dogs waited as Feist panted, winded by something other than the short flight. “What… What are… What are your orders? If you find this, uh, alleged human, what, uh, what will you do?”

“We take them to Asgore.” Stormy’s answer was immediate and matter-of-fact.

Feist’s voice was muted and throttled with anxiety. “But would they be hurt?”

She shook her head, ears swinging to-and-fro. “Oh, no! Our orders are very specific. They’re to be captured with as little force as possible, and kept safe and sound, and taken straight to Asgore.”

_They say he’s a good man, and a good leader._ Being confronted by Asgore might be just the thing to teach Anders to curtail his overly-bold impulses; a little fright to teach him to be more careful around others. Feist looked at the ground and flushed mustard. “Um. Um. Um.” Deep breath. “I might know something about it. About a human.”

The dogs’ tails began to whip back and forth. Their noses twitched in anticipation. Stormy took out her notebook and placed her pencil at the ready.

“… but I’m having trouble remembering.”

She froze for a moment; then her face relaxed into lines of friendly concern. “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Have you tried working Ice-E puzzles? Eating more fish?”

Feist’s eyes slid up to her face, brow furrowed, and choked out the words. “Um… no. Thank you? But… some gold might stimulate my memory.”

Stormy looked at Scout, confusion deepening the folds on her forehead. “I’ve never heard of that remedy.” He shrugged back at her. She turned back to Feist, giving her head a sympathetic tilt. “How about eating walnuts? Have you tried that?”

Feist sputtered. “No, I’m… I’m… I’m talking about a bribe.”

Her eyes widened. She exchanged a long, searching look with the younger dog, before replying in an undertone. “Offering a bribe would be against the code of Asgore’s court. It would be irresponsible and immoral. Of course we’ll do it.” She gave a firm nod. “I don’t have much gold on me right now, but if we catch a human, I promise you you’ll be well-rewarded. So. What do you know?”

Feist wavered in the air, breath quickening, head swimming. “I saw them… him. A little guy in a bandanna. Going towards Hotland. But he’ll come back through Waterfall soon. The road just outside Snowdin, the foggy places — the guard post there. If you hurry, and wait, you’ll be able to catch him there.”

Stormy nodded, licking her nose in concentration as she wrote. “A young male. Mmhmm… Just one? We heard the one in the orange bandanna has a companion.”

“I saw her too, but… she’s a monster. Probably got… human scent all over her by now, so she’ll smell like one, but she’s not one. Got pressured into staying with the human. I think. But she should go free. There’s one human. Just one.”

Stormy gave Scout a look, a slight lift of the nose, and he bounded off in the direction of Snowdin. She finished writing with a flourish and flipped the notepad closed. “Thank you for your cooperation. You’ve done a great service to our King and to the Underground.”

“And my family,” Feist rasped, leaning close. “That’s the only reason I asked for gold. My family needs it.”

“Of course. You’ll get gold for your family, I promise.” Stormy raised a friendly hand as if she was about to give a pat on the back, looked at the ectoplasm she’d be touching, and decided against it. She smiled, a smile full of reassurance and professional pride.

Hanging low in the air, Feist looked away from her and dipped to acknowledge her words. Then, without a backwards glance, without any more hesitation, and trying not to think about the body left vacant by the side of the path, Feist concentrated on throwing off solidity in order to move through the air as quickly as possible.

Echo flowers and boardwalks fell behind; the running form of Office Scout fell behind; ice floes and houses and acres of pine trees fell behind. There was little time to think in the mad dash; that was good. The door to Home City loomed ahead, and in a blink it had fallen behind too.

Toriel was dozing in her soft overstuffed chair by the fire, a book open on her lap, one foot propped up on an ottoman. She blinked, groggy, and then came fully awake and sat upright, eyes gone wide at Feist’s demeanor, mouth falling open with a question she didn’t want to ask.

It was easy to be rushed and breathless, and horrified, and upset. That was all true. It made the one lie Feist needed to tell easier: “The children… can’t… go out. Tell me they’re home!”


	15. Exile

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While writing this chapter I used this map for reference: https://higurashikarly.deviantart.com/art/Undertale-Complete-Map-Waterfall-568932915  
> Here is a description of the save point: https://youtu.be/5IndKnmRM5M?t=41m25s

There were no ghosts nearby when Patience and Anders forded the narrow, ice-floe-clogged stream that crossed the path back towards Snowdin. Patience hung back, watching the ice slide by and measuring the rhythm to find a clear path; her hesitation part natural inclination, part wisdom earned through multiple falls down the waterfall, and part reluctance to submerge her feet in the freezing water. Anders splashed ahead without waiting, still full of energy despite their long walk; he made it across the stream in one dash, as if even the ice floes respected his moxie.

There were no ghosts nearby when the two human children paused at the place where the tunnel narrowed, just past the empty guard post. Anders took off a shoe and shook out a pebble; Patience took advantage of the short breather to finger-comb pieces of leaf out of her wig. Her hands brushed her shirt down and stopped, ranged up to her neck and across her chest, her face crinkling into a pout of disappointment when she realized she had lost her ribbon.

There were no ghosts nearby when the children heard a bark from behind the guard post, which wasn’t empty after all — a scenthound’s muzzle showed above the counter, baying — and a trio of dog soldiers emerged from the mist and spray that covered the path ahead, mouths gaping and tongues lolling with excitement.

Anders ran towards the dogs. No hesitation. Bravery was instinct. His short legs pounded the dirt. He focused on the dogs with such intensity that the rest of the world seemed to go dark and featureless. His heart pounded a driving rhythm in his ears.

But he wasn’t prepared. He lost his chance to strike first as he reached to his belt, fumbling with his boxing gloves, pulling them blindly over his hands. An armored bulldog took the chance to meet his charge with her own. She ran her meaty shoulder into him and bulldozed him sideways, knocking him under one of the waterfalls that drooled frigid water across the path.

Patience stood still when she saw the dogs, her muscles seizing. Her fear instinct wasn’t fight or flight; it was to freeze. And it gave her an advantage. While Anders held the three soldiers’ attention, she slid her knife out from under her skirt. By the time Anders had been pushed aside and the smallest dog, a terrier, turned to her with perked ears and a snuffling nose, she was ready. She sprang forward and jabbed her knife into the wiry coarse hair of the dog’s shoulder. He yelped and whined and limped away, leg paralyzed with the aftershock of Patience’s intention and mouth forming the word “mercy” — he would have a vivid deep bruise from the plastic knife.

The third dog, a shaggy long-legged mutt, wheeled at the sound of his comrade’s cry and came at Patience from behind. Before she could gather herself for another jab her arms had been pinned behind her, the mutt panting hot onto the space behind her shoulders. The knife dangled and fell from her grip.

Anders staggered out from the waterfall, shocked into lethargy by the cold, struggling to get a deep breath through the now-wet bandanna that covered his face. He swung, glove hitting armor with a dull thud, and the bulldog recoiled with a grunt. But she lunged again and batted him to the ground, pinning one of his arms with her broad chest. Officer Scout scrambled to help, using one paw to pin Anders’ free hand. With his other paw he pulled the hat and bandanna from Anders’ head, revealing his small protruding nose, his chin, his round ears.

Officer Scout bayed his joy. “We got the human!”

Anders struggled, jerking his shoulders to try and free a hand, but it only forced more breath out of his lungs. His movements became erratic.

Hearing his gasps and cry of frustration, Patience lowered her head and braced her feet in the frost-crusted mud, pulling harder against the mutt’s hold, feeling her muscles start to shake with fatigue. _If she could just get back to the guard post._ There was a place just behind it where the magical ley lines of the Underground intersected, where the light seemed just a little brighter, where the sound of rushing water echoed and built up into a stirring sound like a symphony. Whenever she walked from Home to Waterfall she had rested there. If she could get back there, she knew she would feel strong again. She lifted her eyes, to at least look at it… and saw Officer Stormy bounding down the tunnel, ears flapping like a flag.

Anders had fainted. The bulldog eased her bulk off of him and checked his breath, felt gently over his limbs to make sure he wasn’t injured. She lifted his small body in her thick arms, holding his head so his neck wouldn’t get sore. Stormy approached, snuffled at his face, and gave a nod of confirmation.

Scout had been tending to the terrier, making sure his only injury was the bruise from the knife-blow, rubbing feeling back into his paws. Scout looked to Stormy, pointing at Patience with his muzzle. “She assaulted this guard. She has to be taken back to Asgore too, to be prosecuted under full extent of the law.” His voice lowered to an undertone. “Um… what does the law say about assaulting a guard? Is there precedent?”

Stormy walked to Patience with slow measured strides; she was held fast by the mutt, she wasn’t going anywhere. She peered into Patience’s face with her deep-set, red-rimmed eyes. Patience stared back with all the fierceness of a Chihuahua.

“Are you sure she isn’t a human too?” Stormy woofed to the other four dogs.

“That ghost said there’s only one human,” Scout barked back.

At the word “ghost” the color drained from Patience’s face. _I would sell him to Asgore for one spider cider._ Her eyes fixed ahead, unseeing, as Stormy leaned in close again and inhaled, contemplating her scent like a wine connoisseur. Stormy raised a paw, ran it along the curve of Patience’s jaw and under the drape of frayed reddish hair, and touched a hidden earlobe. A smile of job-well-done satisfaction lifted her jowls.

“They also said they had trouble remembering,” Stormy said. She pulled off Patience’s wig to reveal her ears, her braided hair, the human shape of her head.

Patience’s eyes fluttered closed. She fell backwards into the mutt’s arms, heartbroken.

* * * * *

Feist and Staid, both having left their bodies, made a headlong dash from Home, through the snowy places, past Snowdin, eyes wide watching for any sign of the children. As they flew through the thick fog where the cold dry air of Snowdin mixed with the warmer humid air of waterfall, Feist’s soul seized and twisted — this was the place, the time to find out whether the plan had worked, or failed, or backfired in some spectacular way.

No one was there. The guard post stood empty, as it had since those first fevered months of Asgore’s no-humans policy. But even blowing past at top speed Feist caught sight of something, something that Staid’s eye — looking for orange or light blue, hoping to recognize the familiar mannerisms of their children in some distant figure — missed: scuffmarks on the dark ground, where the white frost had been scraped by many feet.

As they passed by Blook Acres, Feist fell behind, then far behind, struggling for breath. Staid glanced back and realized that Feist had flown at full speed from Waterfall to Home and back again. They didn’t need to say anything, but bobbed to say that Feist should stay, that they would continue the run to Hotland’s mountainous border to find the children. Feist slowed and stopped, grateful.

The dummy body was still along the path, safe and untouched, but looking saggy and forlorn without a soul inside. Feist re-possessed it with a rush of relief, and rested. So it looked like the plan had worked. Relief and uncertainty and fear alternated, chasing each other in a dizzying cycle.

By the time Feist returned to Blook Acres, Happy and Napster were gone. Happy had found it unbearable to stay still and wait, so he’d rushed out to look for the children himself; Naspter had followed, calling out in a piercing, quavering moan that would repel local monsters but would bring Patience running with concern if she heard it.

Rather than waiting on the empty farm being eaten with anxiety, Feist went wandering the nearby fields of echo flowers and water sausages. It was a pretense, but it was logical enough to search there: it could be hard to see in those shadowy rooms, in all that tall grass… so easy to get lost.

In the end, Staid was the first to learn what had happened. They had flown the foot-worn path through the mountain between Waterfall and Hotland, calling between the boulders and crags, and hadn’t seen or heard any sign of the human children. So they had continued on into Hotland. That Anders: so full of energy, so driven, so hungry for adventure — it would have been just like him to convince his sister to go a little farther than she had planned.

And so Staid came to the guard post at the mountaintop, just within Hotland, and saw a burly, scaly guard tacking a notice to its frame. They waited, invisible, until he had gone, and read the notice.

>ATTENTION Two human children snuck into the Underground. No need for alarm! The heroic Royal Guard captured them before they could harm any citizens. One guard was injured in the battle, but is resting comfortably and is expected to make a full recovery! King Asgore had taken care of the situation. The humans are no longer in the Underground.<

The average citizen of the Underground wouldn’t understand what that really meant. They would likely believe the children had been scolded and sent on their way, back to the human world. Humans were full of surprises, abilities that monsters couldn’t even understand; Asgore was amazingly powerful himself; and that Royal Scientist, he was so mysterious that nobody could even seem to remember anything about him besides an overwhelming sense of awe. It only made sense that together they knew how to send a human through the Barrier.

But Toriel had lived with the Barrier since its formation; her second home in the Underground had been built around it. She knew that just as no monster could travel through without harnessing the power of a human soul, no human could leave without using a monster soul. If no monster had left the Underground, and no monster had died, then no human had left. Toriel remembered the talk, the fight she had had with Asgore. It was why she had left New Home. She knew exactly what would happen if a human was ever taken to Asgore. And because she knew, Staid knew.

Staid was numb and distant; the only thing keeping them from denial and from mental flight from what had happened was the understanding that Toriel needed to be told, and that any hesitation in telling her would only make it harder for her, and for them.

Feist fell into a frenzy of disbelief at the news — asking Staid question after question, hurling full-throated denials at them, and hounding them to come up with some other understanding of what had happened. All the young Blooks had ever known was life in the Underground, where the memory of the War was ever-present and things had always been a certain way. Now everything was backwards: monsters were strong and humans were dead; humans were innocent and Asgore had betrayed them; dogs were gentle and a ghost had committed violence. These two humans had done so much to heal what other humans had broken. It had taken years and years, but Patience had finally begun to heal Feist too… and in return Feist had gotten her killed. It was too much to take in, too much, so Feist fought a hopeless internal battle because on the other side of accepting the truth there was nothing but guilt guilt guilt.

Finally Happy had to physically pull his sibling aside so that Staid could return Home. Sometimes grief made people act in strange ways. Happy was almost relieved that Feist was losing it: as long as he had to deal with someone else, he could focus all his thoughts on them and push his own thoughts and feelings into some dark corner marked _later_. Napstablook had started leaking fearful tears as soon as they learned the children were in danger; since they had seen Staid’s stricken face on return they had been crying a torrent. As they watched Happy try to placate Feist they repeated Patience’s and Anders’ names to themself like a mantra, so they wouldn’t forget.

It was not too long after Staid had left, before true gut-deep understanding had even really had time to set in, when Officer Stormy came back to Blook Acres, carrying a bag of gold.

Feist saw her. And knew. And froze, heart seizing and dropping like it was caught by blue magic.

Stormy saw the three ghosts in the yard: two ectoplasmic forms floating in the fragrant, balmy air, and one dummy whose wooden base was caked with torn-up mud. She double-checked them with a quick glance: the pink one that had been talkative but unhelpful, who smelled of ectoplasm and TV ozone; the dummy that hadn’t spoken, who smelled of cotton and turned earth; and a sad-faced white one she hadn’t seen earlier, who smelled of ectoplasm and saltwater. No burning-yellow ghost. But if they lived here on Blook Acres they must all be members of the Blook family… they must be the family the yellow ghost had mentioned.

“My apologies for interrupting you at a bad time,” she woofed, switching out the loud congratulatory tone she’d expected to use for a low sympathetic tone. She held up the bag of gold. “I’m just here to deliver this. For your cousin and for all of you. With the King’s gratitude.” She held it out to Napstablook, who reflexively held out their arms to receive it.

Feist was paralyzed, trapped between the shame of being found out and the relief of others knowing.

Happy knew. Before she had said a word, he knew. There was no other possible reason why this weird stuffed-shirt royal agent would come back carrying money.

Happy had one immediate purpose, and he let it take the foreground in his mind, squelching new terrible feelings down into the box where his grief already sat: this was ghost family business now, and she needed to leave. He thanked her — what words he said, he didn’t plan out and he didn’t remember afterwards, but she looked satisfied as she turned and left. And when she was out of sight, he waited a few more seconds, and looked at Feist.

Napstablook dropped the money, half-understanding what it meant, bewildered and horrified. “… but I didn’t do anything!” they wailed.

Happy looked at Feist, all the emotions he wanted to express colliding and combining and canceling out until the resulting expression was disturbingly blank.

Feist hunched, head lowered, whining and spitting. “I never wanted this! I… I… I… was trying to help Patience! The dogs said. They wouldn’t be hurt. They were supposed to be safe.”

Happy was still silent — _what could be said?_ — but just under his ectoplasmic surface colors of hot pink and meat-red roiled.

Napstablook’s tears stopped, and their form went paler than the Snowdin fog. They looked at Feist with an expression almost like awe. “… you… you… killed Patstablook… and…”

Feist interrupted. “Pat…sta… p… p… THEY’RE NOT GHOSTS!” Flying through shock and denial and pain and guilt and landing in blind rage, Feist screamed. “Humans killed Staid’s parents! Humans killed Asriel! Humans killed so so so many monsters! They’re dangerous! Why why why don’t any of you remember that?!”

Napstablook’s expression had gone flatter and whiter than the perpetual snows that separated Home from the rest of the Underground. Napstablook and Happstablook watched Feist, wordless.

Eyes desperate, Feist lunged at the discarded bag of gold and gave it a kick towards them, wooden base hitting the metal with a heavy flat thunk. “I did it to help our family!!!”

Napstablook’s voice was a bare whisper. “ _They were_ family.” They took a breath that felt interminable. “…we do not attack family… we do not do things to hurt ourselves…”

Feistablook cried out, howled, keened.

Tears flowed from Napstablook’s eyes again, thin and searing. “… when… when… when…” Their eyes flickered as they sought for any task that could possibly fix what had been done. “… when the human children come back to life… you can be a part of family again.”

Feist fell silent. This had been inevitable; somehow that had been clear from the beginning, and all the protesting and screaming and blaming had been some way to try to stop it. Now that it had happened, there was nothing more to say.

Napstablook and Happstablook turned their backs. They waited for Feist to leave.

Feist turned and shambled away from Blook Acres.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of part 2. The next chapter will be the first of "Part 3: the Garbage Dump." (It will continue to follow Napstablook and Happstablook as well as Feist)

**Author's Note:**

> new note: I received a question via my tumblr blog and answered it here: http://perpetuallurkernazanin.tumblr.com/post/161738862830/i-am-enjoying-your-fanfiction-very-much-after  
> (It refers to an event in Chapter 11 but I don't consider it spoiler-y, so I'm putting it in the main notes)  
> I love receiving feedback. :)
> 
> To anyone who has read this far: Thank You!  
> My partner, River, has done a lot to make this story what it is, and she's really become a co-writer in addition to editor and beta-reader (although I can't add her officially because she doesn't have an AO3 account.)  
> My inbox/message box is open at http://perpetuallurkernazanin.tumblr.com/ (At least, I think it is... there's a reason my tagline is "How do I tumblr?") I welcome comments, questions, criticism.  
> River is at htt://i-am-river.tumblr.com. If you have love to give, send it her way. If you have criticism, send it to me. :)  
> A couple of analysis/theory posts pertinent to this story:  
> \- Why Mettaton is canonically transgender / What is glam: http://perpetuallurkernazanin.tumblr.com/post/149220999905/canon-evidence-that-mettaton-is-a-trans-masculine  
> \- Cuteness and discrimination in Underground society: http://perpetuallurkernazanin.tumblr.com/post/153126493650/undertale-theory-cuteness-and-discrimination-in


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